Can Twitter Trends be gamed?

Going by the quality of  hashtags & topics that show up on Twitter Trends, I definitely think they are gamed. Though I found Twitter Trends useful earlier, they seem meaningless to me now as I regularly see a lot of shady & silly trending topics.

A while ago, Amit Agarwal wondered while tweeting if it takes just 63 tweets to make a topic trend?

The Twitter Trends FAQ informs that Trends are determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow and your location. This algorithm identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help you discover the hottest emerging topics of discussion on Twitter that matter most to you.

There doesn't seem to be any method in the trending madness though. I found a topic listed in Trends though it had a single tweet!

To promote its business interests, it appears Twitter doesn't mind if a topic is promoted artificially. To be really useful I feel Twitter's algorithm should pick up topics and hashtags in which public interest grows organically.