Well my understanding of Google Bowling is giving a site a huge number of links for the same term and as a result it rises in the serps. This was done to G. W. Bush’s white house page for incompetent or something like that (I can’t remember).
I wouldn’t believe any who says they can hurt your site by google bowling it. Sure they could make it rank for some less than desirable terms, or I guess they could hurt you by getting another site to outrank you for a term you are ranking for.
There are 3 things to remember about Google Bowling, you can’t be banned by G! because of Google Bowling, the results of Google Bowling are short lived, and G! is on the lookout for Google Bowling and closing the lane 
Of course I reserve the right to be wrong 