If this is so relevant and obvious, why not put up two files: one 192/24 and one 48/16 and allow people to run their own double-blind test as he notes in the article? If you could produce a repeatable test where some number of people can tell that one is better, that would be a powerful argument.
He's argued that people have done this test over and over, and nobody can ever tell the difference.
Firstly people haven't 'done this test over and over.'
There's been exactly one serious sort-of peer-reviewed paper in the AES journal, and that paper compared high-res commercially mastered audio sources of possibly questionable parentage with a 44.1/16 downconversion.
It also included SACD, which isn't a fixed bit depth linear PCM technology, and has been justifiably criticised for it.
I'm not aware of any tests that compare raw high-res unprocessed recordings with downsampled content.
Secondly, a fair comparison would be 48/16 and 48/24.
Personally I'm not very sold on high sample rates. I know there are technical reasons why it's easier to make antialiasing filters sound transparent at 96k than it is at 44.1k, and in practice it's not easy to pull apart practical design from theoretical limits. (Nyquist is only ever an ideal. No hardware is ever Nyquist-perfect.)
Basically psychoacoustics is hard. Ears are ridiculously sensitive, brains are occasionally delusional, and marketing people lurk everywhere.
It's extremely difficult to pull apart fact from reality.
But that's no excuse for having a misleadingly superficial understanding of the theory - which the original article does.
The problem with this approach is no one (except professionals) have properly treated rooms. There is no way anyone, on any equipment, can make any critical decisions about audio in an untreated room. Ok, I over exaggerate. But my point stands. Unless you've fully gone to town on room treatment, no one is going to be able to tell. The room will sound like ass even with a million dollar speaker system.
What you need to do is get those files, and send people down to a professional mix studio. Then AB them in there. Get people to sit in the sweet spot. Then you'll have a decent result.
Thing is, people have done this very test in professional listening spaces. And the results are always fascinating (and some people can tell!). In fact it's one of the most fun aspects of a professional facility! Audio shootouts!
He's argued that people have done this test over and over, and nobody can ever tell the difference.