I certainly agree with your concerns about beginners using the exercise.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "wholesale recommendation of good mornings that seems to be the trend"... I rarely step inside commercial gyms, but I can honestly say that, except for PLers, I can't remember seeing a single person doing them.

As far as risk goes, the same thing could be (and is) said about squats. It's almost a cliche now, but as Louie said "A perfectly safe exercise is a perfectly useless exercise".

We're probably going to have to agree to disagree on good mornings.