I think you are significantly misrepresenting what the author said. He didn't say he has no idea what control variables are. What he said is:

> The "controlling for" thing relies on a lot of subtle assumptions and can break in all kinds of weird ways. Here's[1] a technical explanation of some of the pitfalls; here's[2] a set of deconstructions of regressions that break in weird ways.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

[2] https://www.cold-takes.com/phil-birnbaums-regression-analysi...

To me this seems to demonstrate a stronger understanding of regression analysis than 90+% of scientists who use the technique.