Interesting thread over at IHelpYou Forums. The thread discusses an individual's findings based on action he took. The scenario... His site was not ranking well. He linked to "expert" sites from his page. His site began to rank well.
The question this thread tries to answer is wether linking to "expert" sites played the role of the site beginning to rank well OR is it just by adding external links on the page itself that played the role of the site beginning to rank well. It is obviously hard to determine the real answer to the question without more detail and history on the page, nevertheless, it is still an interesting topic.