For the past year, I've told people that size 14, and most cases size 16, is the new size 12.
Yet, some designers, especially designers outside the design space (designers you find in places like insurance companies) still crush size 12 fonts into large spaces.
Drives me crazy. Not only is it hard to read, it's essentially invisible on monitors with high resolutions.
I wouldn't say that this article is blindly based on the golden ratio.
It has merit.
But while on the subject of frowned upon...
Do you know what else was frowned up at one point?
The Sun being the center of our solar system.
Just because it's frowned upon doesn't mean it's not true :-P