With FLAC/PCM you simply don't have any "is the bitrate sufficient? Is there no encoder nor decoder bug that introduces artefacts despite sufficient bitrate?" questions, which for me is worth the increased storage requirements.
Let's not overgeneralize. One bogus claim (about sound quality) does not render the rest of the assertions (mainly about metadata and how accurate information is missing on streaming services) faulty.
On topic: as others mentioned, don't you think some types of music lends itself better to being recognized as 160kbps vs lossless than other, and classical with it's typical larger dynamic range than a standard pop song would be one of those types? I'm not saying the author's claim is valid, nor invalid, just that it's not completely impossible he was hearing it was not lossless. Though I doubt it.
No, but one bogus claim asserted strongly from a clear position of ignorance calls the likelihood of his accuracy into question.
It's not an overgeneralization, just a simple matter of credibility. I am less likely to believe he is properly objective in evaluating other criteria as he has completely failed to be objective or rigorous in evaluating this one.
BBC Radio 3 in the UK streams classical music at 320kbs over the internet. (I'm not sure if international users get this high bitrate stream or a lower bitrate though.)
This person has never ABX tested 160kbps lossy versus lossless. This bogus and unfounded claim calls the rest of his expert assertions into question.
Even on ideal headphones/amp, I know no one who can consistently identify 160kbps from original PCM in an ABX test.