There was an anchor variation penalty long before this. What evidence is there to pin it on such a narrow aspect, and not the dozens of other things that G could penalize for?
Just because you and a few other people with crappy anchor variation got hit doesn't prove anything.
There are so many variables coming together when a site gets hit, that when you analyze a group of people with sites that got hit, it could be for a completely different reason for each person. One commonality between a limited sample doesn't equal causation. Lots of people were using PBN's, blogroll links, GA, web20/wiki/sb blasts, profile/comment blasts in they're dumb..etc.