It is a strong argument in this case though, because Terence Taos expertise is directly linked to his ability to not misstate the history of mathematics.

Also note how the quote by Tao is in all likelyhood not meant as an absolute; rather than a statement of a trend - a handfull of counterexamples do I no way change anything about the truth value of Tao's quote.

On the other heand; consider how absurd it would be if "... in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community, which would reverse centuries of traditions of open science ..." would indeed be a misstatement; which would imply that far more promising research directions were not shared with the broader community (i.e.: published). I wonder what different reading of that counterfactual there could be other than secret societies that kept their discoveries and research directions to themselves - which we just learned about (since we would otherwise not be refering to the secret societies and their supposed promising research directions).

All pretty straightforward, I would say - both that "misstatement" is hopefully based an overly strict reading of Tao's quote, and that mentioning Tao's background as one of the fields leading practitioners is relevant as well. Again; to make sure: A few counterexamples achieves nothing here. It would need to reach a certain threshold of such counterexamples before we will have to write the history of mathematics; and before Tao actually made a misstatement here.

And the other an appeal to tradition. There was only one Gauss to scoop and focusing on him misses the larger math culture which Terry might be aware of, where most trust others to not scoop.

And if any mathematician's AI usage on a problem leads to scooping, the volume of agents involved gives them a huge advantage which could prompt mathematicians to not use LLMs.

Though you can say Terry's claim is a slippery slope.

So let me get this straight: you're saying that Terrence Tao, one of the most prominent mathematicians alive today, doesn't know math history? And me pointing this out is merely an appeal to authority?

Get outta here.