Hypergraph removal with polynomial bounds

Given a fixed k-uniform hypergraph F, the F-removal lemma states that every hypergraph with few copies of F can be made F-free by the removal of few edges. Unfortunately, for general F, the constants involved are given by incredibly fast-growing Ackermann-type functions. It is thus natural to ask for which F one can prove removal lemmas with polynomial bounds. One trivial case where such bounds can be obtained is when F is k-partite. Alon proved that when (i.e. when dealing with graphs), only bipartite graphs have a polynomial removal lemma. Kohayakawa, Nagle and Rödl conjectured in 2002 that Alon's result can be extended to all, namely, that the only -graphs for which the hypergraph removal lemma has polynomial bounds are the trivial cases when F is k-partite. In this paper we prove this conjecture.