My favorite is the “There’s only one right way, and it’s mine!” philosophy.
Like, literally, if something works for someone, for their purposes… why do you care?
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I’m a child of the 60’s and 70’s, I prefer a full bush.
I remove spent leaves as the plant lets them go or if necrotic. Otherwise the plant is still using them
“Logic” is a dangerous thing. With it you can convince yourself of anything your heart desires.
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I personally find buds deep in the canopy aren’t nearly as dense or crystal coated as buds that aren’t covered by the canopy. That’s exactly what that side by side showed.
But it definitely depends on strain and environment as to the degree of difference.
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I am a starter grower, I have been growing for the last 2 years and this thread made me heavly defoliate plants that are finishing flowering.
I did that experiment defoliate vs lifta, and I have to say that in my case the lifta had better yeld overall that time.
If leaves are our plants solar panels, the most panels, the better if they are exposed to light.
What I can observe is that colas at the same hight will grow evenly because they are at the same distance from the light source, lower buds grow less because they are more distant to light as well as their stalk leaves are shaded.
I think leaves are important until last 2 weeks of flowering, by that time the plant focus is to improve buds and thc production and probably the small sugar leaves on bud sites are suficient to make it rippen without yeld loss.
On the other hand you your RH is above 50% it is a good idea to defoliate to prevent pests or mould.
Just sharing my small experience so far.
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Some close up for you, of plants shown in up :
The toxic pin up of catalog, rock hard when dryed
The one not defoliated in the closet, dense but “spongy” when dried
This landrace tortured for herm detection, greedy and fluffy as she always was
You can always “catalyze” the volume in something more caricatural (with big lights and juggling with nutes), but the density is generally hardcoded by the genetic no matter what.
IMHO it’s exactly what we need more here, in OG. Done by sedentar OG members of course. I love these kind of shares, as hell. Debate are cool, it permit to meet people on a question and to have fun. But this … it’s the next level.
Like a section structured in a “library” covering all “neverending loop questions”, even the “can I recognize the females on the shape of the seeds” one 
Or the legendary “boiling roots when harvested” lol
More seriously, the playground is immense : lights, nutes, volumes of medium, type of mediums …
Just my twos cents.
On this specific test, i’m seeing a problematic. When we are all happy to find a document that bring a proof of our beliefs, we have the trend to forget everything about the context.
Others test/runs must be done aside, not to debunk it. But as complementary data. I try to explain.
LED : it have to be done also on others lights, with the same genotype.
Strains : in my opinion it’s better to document this way an unique genotype’s profile. The test is pretty close to this condition, the Platinium Cookie is enough close to the Runtz to consider it covered. But same test with a haze, a pure afghani … so this way you get everything from the effort : the knowledge of reactions of a genotype/strain/phenotype (when only same the clone are used), the purpose of the test, how to manage it etc …
Add any other parameter … and it’s not useless at all. When a test have covered the whole main lines of strains (skunk, afghani, hazes, “clone only” well known by numerous people…) and bring the same result on differents hands and styles of grow : that’s the real diamond, the final one that can be linked to say “STFU” in debates ^^
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I just read an interesting peer reviewed research article in which they tested carbohydrate root storage in slow, medium, and fast growing plants.
The control group was grown normally, and the variable group was defoliated. Fast growing plants apparently do not prioritize storage of nutrients in the roots, however, when the plant was defoliated in two stages, the plant actually shifts to prioritize carbohydrate storage in the roots.
If we apply this theoretically to cannabis (a fast growing plant), it could explain why less leaf surface area is necessary, due to the storage of nutrients in the root tissue… lessening the need to cannibalize leaves.
Interesting, no?
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Hm. It’s as if the plant thinks something is eating it’s tasty leaves, so it starts to store energy where the critters can’t eat it. Then the plant lays low until the critters move on and regrows 
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This was the correlation that they drew as well 
Not to mention nutrient dense. It’s absolutely impossible that these plants don’t experience zoological defoliation in their natural environments.
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No being big on defoliating I’ve a lot of bud pictures where the bud didn’t ever see direct light.
Under the leaf.
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IOW “rationalize”. If someone says it on the internet, it must be true!
There is little to no science in cannabis forums, just a bunch of voodoo theories, snake oils, and herd mentality driven by feel good myths.
It’s a weed people, a flowering foliar plant that just happens to bloom like all foliar annuals. Grow it like you would a tomato.
You have grown tomatoes before, right? 
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Jfc, no I’m not big on defoliating but I wouldn’t write it off, idk know any better than the next person though I’ve my reservations about better/bigger buds, but that said I’ve been wrong lots of times before but that would be cool on this occasion 
That was a couple of weeks ago.
3-4 days ago, i don’t have the balls to pull the leafs off my main crop, a little at a time!
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Here’s the research I referenced.
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i too believe defoliating is worth it, although this is from 20 years ago and 400w hps. have yet to try it with leds. i just never saw the sense in growing the leaves when all i smoked was the buds. it seemed to work for me and this white widow, it was three hit shit.
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That looks amazing.
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thanx, but i was a mere newb i think it was my 3d grow inside. @greenmonster714 was the master who showed me what i know, that and the original og site.
just read that link on manifolding and fimming. i always cut mine into 8 with a razor blade, but they had to get big enough to support that. it was the only downside i found, but after i tried it i never grew a comparison to see if i was wrong.
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So buds produce the leaves?
no, they came from the stems from what i recall. either way it’s kind of hard to argue with results. i could get almost a gram per watt in a 40x40" cabinet with no smell. i could probably have optimized it and gotten more but i had enough for me and to give away to friends, and nobody ever smoked theirs when i was around.
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Wow overgrow is angry today.
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i just got out of surgery. not me. i’m just sittin’ here chillin’. made my first gallery today. throwback thursday…
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not me, in great mood
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