Kjell, I did in fact read the entire thread, as much a waste of my time as it was.
I noticed someone asking point blank if inbound links can hurt a site. I saw a number of people offering their opinions, and a few explaining test results on just this subject. That is all well and good, this is how we all learn.
Then I see you and one other doing nothing but theorizing about what you have no way of knowing without actually getting off your collective butts and doing some work/testing instead of guessing, and trying to pass that off as truth or fact.
You can say it is "probable" all you like, but that probability is skewed by your own way of thinking therefore it is simply nothing more than your opinion.
The fact is, after all 50-100 or so posts you made in this thread, you have but merely an opinion, without any testing whatsoever, which could have been said in a single post.
The fact is, a number of citations in this thread pointed out that quite a few of the more "notable" (meaning well known, and generally respected)
SEO's all say they have seen this exact thing themselves. Test results have been explained which show it was in fact done numerous times to several websites which fit the patterm we targetted with the expected results.
Once again, the answer to this entire topic is: Yes, they can.