The white paper is over 5 years old. The blurb you quoted from Benchmark is over 7 year old. Benchmark now uses 192K. Things change.
The white paper is still on the Lavry website and so are the Benchmark comments. The burden of proof is on you to show they recanted their earlier positions. Show me where Lavry has changed his mind. His stance on this topic is widely known in the industry so if he changed his mind I would like some proof. The reason they offer them is because mastering studios need them when mixes get sent to them with 4x sample rates or engineers are asked to record at those sample rates by clients. Also, some engineers just like the sound - some might like the sound the distortion adds, which is totally valid.
You seem to have a religious belief regarding high sample rates. I can tell you, as a professional classical musician who also records, that there are far more critical issues than sampling above 96k. When I down sample properly and dither from 96/24 or 88.2/24 to 44.1/16, it is extremely difficult to hear the difference, if at all, let alone 96 vs 192. I've done blind listening tests with my professional musician friends and the results have been right around 50/50, the same as guessing. I think I can hear the difference when I know which one I am listening too, but when it is blind, suddenly I cannot tell any more. I prefer to focus on better mic placement, better mics, better converters (not necessarily meaning higher sampling rates), and more importantly - better acoustics.