Hyderabad: Well-known scientist Prof. R.A. Mashelkar is proposed to be the Chancellor of Reliance Jio Institute, which was recently given the tag of Institute of Eminence though it is still on the drawing boards.
But a search for Prof. Mashelkar on Google shows results on a plagiarism row he was involved in a few years back. According to reports, he had admitted that a report submitted by a committee headed by him on “patentability of drugs” on December 29, 2006, to the government was plagiarised. He took the report back in 2007.
The most searched keyword for JNU Professor Atul Johari, who was booked for sexual harrasement, was ‘Atul Johari RSS’ and ‘Atul Johari BJP’.
For UoH Vice Chancellor Prof. Appa Rao Podile, the most searched word on Google was his caste after suicide of Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula last year.
An expert said Google does not manipulate information and relies on an algorithm. A controversy diminishes all other achievements of the person involved.
Mr Khaja Shaik Rehan, a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert, said, “Google search results are based on what most people search for. The region is also taken into consideration.”
He said Google bots trawl the keywords that are most searched. “It depends on the number of searches. Google search can be easily influenced and tweaked,” Mr Rehan said.
He said a search for top 10 criminals used to show the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was then tweaked to remove the display. “The searches can be tweaked with black hat SEO,” he said. Black hat SEO means the practice doesn’t last long but can have a huge impact temporarily on the search results.
“It takes months and years to build a business offline. One key controversy can make or break a brand or a person within seconds.”
Mr Rakesh Dubbudu, open data campaigner and founder of Factly, said, “When you type Professor Prof. R.A. Mashelkar on Google you will only see his achievements but when someone types ‘Prof. R.A. Mashelkar Plagiarism’ the searches will show about the controversy. It relies on an algorithm to show the results.”
