In general, I think it is correct to tell people, especialy newer trainies, that they should use weights for strength development/maintenance and hypertrophy. This helps people who can not keep things straight to keep proper priorities in mind when working out. Also, low reps are not very metabolically challenging, and therefore they are a good way to preserve strength while loosing weight. In fact, if one has been training like a bodybuilder, and then moves to lower reps while loosing weight, they may experience a strength gain.
That said, I think it is moronic for people to make statements saying any given way of training is going to lead to significant catabolism for all trainees and not understand themselves to be making generalizations to help newer trainees. Furthermore, for someone who wants to get ripped, and who has the recovery abillity of a 22 year old, like me–and is not some tired old fart, or who takes steriods, like arnold, weights MAY be the best way too loose fat. Admittedly some strength will be lost, especially if one had been training with lower reps before, but just look at the way Arnold trained before a contest (which is excessive for almost all of us and probably also himself), or look at the recommendations of Vince Gironda (who both suggested easing up the workouts for fat loss for most people, and had others performing 8 sets of 8 reps for 2 to four exercises per body part, training each part two to threee times per week). Vince’s training, which I have slowly moved towards for myself, keeps the metabolism jacked up, it keeps blood constantly bringing nutrients to the muscles, and due to my previous history just focusing on very low reps (1-5) and strength, I have increased muscle size, at least for my arms, and in general my work capacity seems greater.
Finally, this may really piss off some people, but the idea of spot reduction, which science has so frequently dismissed, merely because it does not understand it, seems to me to have been empirically verified by thousands of bodybuilders, including Arnold, who noted that daily aerobics did far less to keep his abs shredded than thousands of reps of ab exercises. Of course I think spot reduction is not the quickest way to reduce a lot of fat, and it will not even work if diet and the rest of one’s exercise are not in line, but I do not think people should just blindly close their minds to it.