^ I've read it before (it's been mentioned in several articles on luminous landscape), and I believe it is true for my EX1 although I haven't tested it specifically.
I must say I've started using the image on the screen more than the histogram to judge my exposure, since the histogram disappears as soon as I start dialing in exposure compensation, so I'd be going into EV comp, dial in a bit, go out of EV comp to see the histogram, possibly go back to adjust more, see if it was enough again... well you get the picture, it's a PITA. Only in manual mode is the histogram displayed at all times.
The way I understand ETTR, it's not so much about noise control but more about giving you (even) more options to get a contrasty scene than a normally exposed raw file does.
If the image data is bunched up relatively tightly in the tone-rich higher stops, you can apply a steep contrast curve without any banding or sudden tonal transitions: in a 12-bit sensor, like the article says the lightest stop has 2048 possible values and the darkest stop has 2 possible values. Already the 9th lightest stop has only 16 possible values.
Therefore, if you have a 6-stop scene exposed right around the middle of the tone curve, the darkest stop in this scene falls into this band with only 16 possible tonal values. Even if you adjust the exposure in post-processing to stretch the 6-stop scene to go from pure black to pure white (drastically increasing contrast), all the data in the darkest stop will still be divided over only 16 tonal values, giving very abrupt transitions or banding (and lots of noise). If you had exposed to the right, the darkest stop in your scene would have 64 possible tonal values, giving a much smoother look if you apply the same strong contrast.