What kind of SEO is this?

Yesterday I met with a SEO expert( what he told me about himself) he was the newly recruited guy in the organization. He found his knowledge different from the rest of the world. While making the organization's site SEO friendly, he told to remove heading tags from the code as they are not good for SEO purpose.( This was not the first 'joker' in the SEO industry to whom I met, but I encounter many such 'SEO expert' in Pune who has challenging( for Google) knowledge of SEO). Now, the question is how a tag which the W3C has recommended in their recommendation can hurt SEO? A webpage which passes W3C test is the first love of the spider then how it weaks the process of SEO?

I think that these SEO experts are like the cooks who know half cooking. So sometimes they will burn, sometimes they will keep the food half coocked. What will happen if you eat half backed food? surely you will fall ill. Same is true for website your website will fall pray to the insult of the spider if you hire such half-knowledged SEO EXPERT. I find many such peoples who don't know what are the Webmaster's guidlines and still call themselves SEO EXPERT.