ArticleInteractive journal of medical research2025
Effective Recruitment or Bot Attack? The Challenge of Internet-Based Research Surveys and Recommendations to Reduce Risk and Improve Robustness.
Article in Interactive journal of medical research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Participants using GenAI in online studies: an overview and recommendations for researchers and reviewers.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Battling the Bots and Defending Against Fraudulent Responses in an International Community-Engaged Web-Based Survey With People Living With Long COVID: Methodological Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Exploring death literacy with allied health professionals: A cross-sectional survey in Australia.Palliative care and social practice · 2026Article
- A lexical decision task for rapid estimation of crystalized vocabulary knowledge in Thai.PloS one · 2026Article
- Self-titration of cannabis consumption: An epidemiological perspective.Journal of psychiatric research · 2025Article
- Digital Deception: Survey Bots and the Ethics of Data Integrity.Ethics & human researchArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Internet-based research has exploded in popularity in recent years, enabling researchers to offer both investigations and interventions to broader participant populations than ever before. However, challenges associated with internet-based research have also increased-notably, difficulties verifying participant data and deliberate data manipulation by bot and spam responses. This study presents a viewpoint based on 2 case studies where internet-based research was affected by bot and spam attacks. We aim to share the learnings from these experiences with recommendations for future research practice that may reduce the likelihood or impact of future attacks. The screening and verification processes used are presented and discussed, including the limitations of these. Based on our experience, security and screening within internet-based research platforms are partly effective, but no solution is available to protect researchers completely against bot attacks. Implications for future research and advice for health researchers are discussed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.