The metaphor can introduce PageRank and link signals, but search evaluation is not a simple liquid-distribution calculation. Third-party scores do not expose Google’s internal allocation.
Google treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints. Nofollow therefore should not be used as a dependable crawling block or an indexing-exclusion mechanism.
Instead of removing useful citations to preserve an imagined score, inspect whether readers can reach key information and evidence. Check that relevant documents link to important internal pages.