I'm not saying "Bullying is bad and bullies are bad people", that would be a value judgement. I'm saying bullying is the strictly worse strategy for strengthening his paper's claims in this scenario. The better strategy would be to foster an environment in which people can easily replicate your claims.
Are you suggesting Dean take a different approach in his response? Are you saying it was already too late given the environment? (I’m also not sure I know what you mean by environment here.)
