No, I think some of the suggestions on here that people are lowering the score deliberately is unfounded. If you click the stats page, you can see who is leaving scores. If I am being brutally honest, the only score manipulating I am seeing is from Shenmue fans signing up to leave a 10/10.
To be honest, I'm not a fan of this. Nobody is going to take the score seriously if they see a bunch of new users sign up and give it a 10/10, it's not honest and there is a chance that a lot of these reviews will get removed if they suspect any boosting.
Also, it's quite normal for a lot of users on MAL to be overly harsh on certain anime. It's not uncommon for users to leave a 2 or 3. Many users have hundreds of animes on their watch list with a mean score of around 5. Basically, what I am saying is, don't take MAL too seriously. A score on MAL will have very little impact on how the show is received from the wider audience and will have little to no impact on if the show receives a second season or not.