Rosalind - 9:00 am on May 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

So if this theory were to be true couldnt you simply remove all controlable links to yourself in an effort to cut down link growth?

That would backfire if the scraper site links are numerous and very low PR, and if the links under your control are actually valuable and older. You wouldn't be doing anything about the sudden growth of new links. That's assuming that Google is taking the age of the links into account, which their patent application suggested.