How the internet and its bots are sabotaging scientific research

There was a time, just a couple of decades ago, when researchers in psychology and health always had to engage with people face-to-face or using the telephone. The worst case scenario was sending questionnaire packs out to postal addresses and waiting for handwritten replies. So we either literally met our participants, or we had multiple corroborating points of evidence that indicated we were dealing with a real person who was, therefore, likely to be telling us the truth about themselves. Since then, technology has done what it always does – creating opportunities for us to cut costs, save time and access wider pools of participants on the internet. But what most people have failed to fully realise is that internet research has brought along risks of data corruption or impersonation which could be deliberately aiming to put research projects in jeopardy.