Well, my buddy thought the same thing, after reading about it in High Times, and when I gave him some of my clones, he tried it. My plants and his, were the exact same age, about the same size, except that he removed all the fan leaves during flowering, both using same soil and 600 HPS. Well, my yield doubled his, and it was VERY obvious that those missing fan leaves were the cause. I should add that he removed too many at once, or at least that's my theory(after having done it once myself.lol), and that I've seen nice plants with alot of foliage removed. I'm just not a fan of it, never seen the reason to do it, introducing risk, when not necessary. I do remove a leaf here and there though, but mainly use LST to open up the plant, rather than chopping leaves. Does the trick for me.