That's an interesting point, Scott. To an extent, I'd agree; but if the "real" colours / colour casts are unsettling to the extent that they spoil the impact of the image, and they aren't intended to be a feature, perhaps they're best removed. I know there are purists who will object, just as they'd object to cloning out a rock which gets in the way, but I take the view that we're producing things that bring pleasure to the viewer, not documentary shots.
Jeremy
Agreed, Jeremy - the purists aren't artists but ideologues who believe nature is static. The rock that's here today will be gone "tomorrow" - swept away in a flood or eroded over time or moved by some kid looking for treasures. Photographers who tie themselves to puritan ideas about not cropping nor cloning nor altering colour cast, etc. are slaves to this concept that nothing changes in nature and slaves to the engineers who designed their equipment and the algorithms that run it.
Once you choose to make even one slight change to the way the camera spat out the photo (one slight exposure or contrast adjustment), then you must accept that any change is an acceptable decision to make provided it flows from the will of the artist. Otherwise, with the myriad options available, where could one possibly draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable (pure and unpure) except on the basis of what "works" for the photograph and the photographer's artistic vision? If the photographer chooses to define their vision as "purist" then they must accept that no changes are permitted to the raw file or JPEG from the camera. Wow what a cop out; what a waste of the creative energy that helps define us as individuals and as humans!
The ”can't change anything after exposure" camp is an artificial throw back to amateur film days when the average photographer couldn't change very much because it was too laborious, so they created this "rule": "If I can't change anything, no one should". Transparency photographers were the most dogmatic for obvious reasons. I remember when one photographer showed slides he had very pleasingly cropped using foil tape. The photographers in the audience were outraged - but he held fast to his belief that we are artists and reserve the right to make those decisions. Surprisingly, the non-photographers, mostly spouses, had no trouble with the cropping.
The myth of it is that amateur photographers and a few purist pros were the only ones following this ideal as the likes of National Geographic (and all the other popular photo magazines) were routinely making significant darkroom alterations to photos (hmmmm, let's move that pyramid over there where it works better, or, more simply, "let's raise the contrast here and hold back the exposure there"). Alterations have been made to photographs since the first photographs were made in a darkroom! Meanwhile the public naively believed this purist ideal applied to all photographs they saw, so are always taken aback when they learn quite the opposite is true.
Sorry folks, photography is art. You can start with a blank canvas and build the photograph you see in your mind's eye, or you can go through life documenting and recording and hide behind this mythical purist ideal.