I thought he had done the tests as part of his work, but in any case it is published on the FBI's web site and looks like an official recomendation to me.
Also, I don't think that there are many people saying that a 2006 pixel has more resolution than a 2000 pixel. Larger pixels have more dynimic range than small ones but pixels are getting smaller not larger in most new cameras.
Beyond that this gets into a debate about what is "science". In the book by the Nobel prize winner who basically made gene maping possiable, (Dancing Nakid in the Mine Field) he talks about the fact that science is: coming up with a theory, runing experiements to prove the theory and publishing the results in a manor that other people can check, by running the same experiements and seeing if they get the same results.
Yes I can order the disks and get the raw files to see which image I like better but that doesn't tell me much about absolute resolution limits. To make judgements about resolution I need to have some deminishing detail so that I can say that I can read this line but not that line, for example.
To do that you have to quantify something. The title of the article is "measuring megapixels". Normally if you "measure" something you get numbers, not opinions.
People have been testing resolution for over a hundred years. Why not use the proven techniques? (You can download a resolution test chart off the web.)
Yes I know, people will say, "I don't photograph resolution test charts". Point is, if you are trying to decide what you like best for your work, the test is a great test. Just don't advertise it as a resolution test.
As to who cares, I assumed that was the purpose of the article. If resolution and absolute information capture isn't important to someone's efforts or art then that is fine. I suspect that for 99% of the world's photography (a vast amount better than mine) resolution isn't a factor.
One of the reasons that I believe the FBI article is that it tracks my own tests. However, I collect microscopes so I am checking my negatives under the microscope, not by using low res scans. With very carefully made 4x5 negatives, I found that I had to have an 8000 dpi drum scan (wet) to get all the information off of a velva transparancy.
The easiest resolution test that I can come up with is to photograph a newspaper and keep increasing the distance. Different camera systems will drop out as you try to read the paper from the file or negative. However, you will have to have some very high resolution way of checking your negatives. (A 40 power loupe, a microscope or a very high res scanner.)