That is exactly what seems to have happened. Before the recent flurry of noises some of the new merit sources were making in their celebratory posts, there were 109 merit source according to the stats page. It was then reported b a member of staff that 17 new merit source were added however the stats page shows 88 in total:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=sourcesAre you implying that out of 109 old merit sources, Theymos created 17 new Merit Sources, and destroyed 38 other MS?
This makes me wondering who was demoted. I had no clue about such an high number of MS being so inactive.
Well, I have a few ideas, but I don't know how to check for that number in reality.