Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum: topic
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Infiltration of web 2.0 content with stealth advertising?
Sarah Kemmitt
Tuesday, 01 July 2008 14:28 UTC
Do you trust Web2.0 content when people are giving advice or opinions on products or services? It’s an ideal forum for shills to operate in, and must be very difficult to detect. So, for example, in an on-line support group for instruments or protocols is it possible to trust recommendations? Has this been an issue with anyone in the science arena?
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Replies
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Good question Sarah. I can speak for Nature Network. So far, we haven’t noticed too many people giving biased advice in protocols forums. The responses seem to be pretty objective. We have had spam, but that’s easy to spot and we delete that right away. We’ve noticed some spam ‘dressed up’ as real comments, but again, we can see through those pretty quickly too.
We have had a few people posting links to, for example, their new website for scientists, asking for feedback. This is borderline, so we judge on a case-by-case basis.
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On the Nature Protocols Discussion Forum – which is perhaps one of the more obvious places for shills to operate on the Network – we haven’t had any obvious problems. In addition, I think that scientists tend to be pretty shrewd consumers; they are more likely to use a recommendation for a specific product as a helpful starting point for further investigation rather than rush out and try/buy it immediately.
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Yes i agree there is a degree of trust required when researching products/services on resource sites. Alot of these so-called “info-sites” are heavily biased in favour of their flagship advertisers. The small supplier does’nt get a look in. In theory web 2.0 should remove this bias but in practice, i dont know??
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I visit a number of protocols and science advice sites during my working hours at Gene Tools. If I see a place where information about our products might be useful, I write a comment (often citing relevant peer-reviewed work). However, there is no stealth involved: my profile identifies me as a Gene Tools employee and if available I add a signature file with my affiliation. Perhaps the concern arises when industry folks do not identify themselves as such.
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You can usually identify astroturfers because they don’t participate in other discussions but only recommend a certain product. So if you’re unsure of a recommendation, check the profile and see what else they do.
(This is also usually how they’re caught by moderators)So I would trust advise from someone who is generally active and just recommends something once, and recommends different products or alternatives. If someone is a new member of a forum and their first post is product advice I’d be wary. (And if a lot of people recommend the same thing and they’re all new members who haven’t contributed elsewhere, they probably all belong to the same company…)
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This is a bit trivial, so apologies, but on my personal blog, I find that if I put something in a title of a post, eg I once wrote “shoes” for some reason long forgotten in a post I wrote over a year ago, I get “advertising via spam”, if that is the correct term. ie I get comments to that old post from shoe manufacturers or sellers, that are disguised to look like comments. (Not that the post was actually about shoes, I was using the word “shoes” in a different context, I think it was to do with the phrase “shoe in” and whether it is “shoo in” or “shoe in”.)
I have read somewhere that firms actually employ people (human beings, not robots) to cruise round the blogosphere/Internet writing these types of comments to posts. Very strange. Maybe it is the web 2.0 version of sweatshops.
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The Internet is a fantastic tool that allows researchers from all over the world to exchange ideas. It is, however, an idea place for people to hide their identity and operate as a shill; thus, the opportunity for vendors to operate in a “stealth mode” by not being honest or fully disclosing their affiliation is likely to occur. Moderators of forums and blogs can easily verify affiliations, should be able to prevent surreptitious operators from participating and should enforce full disclosure. The other approach used by vendors to mask their advertising activity is to employ people who appear not to be affiliated with the sponsoring company. This is an ongoing problem in the clinical research community where ghost writing, and even ghost researching, has become a serious concern with several cases in which unfavorable data was either not presented or was altered. Again, fully affiliation transparency is needed and must be monitored by all online participants.
Vendors of research products provide an essential service to the research community by making materials, tools and equipment widely available. Hopefully this service is done for a fair price. Many vendors employ very experienced and technically competent scientists who can offer advice and assistance to researchers. Therefore, limiting vendor participation in online forums and blogs would be a disservice to the research community. If a vendor’s product or service solves a researcher’s problem, would not an opened exchange of information be the most efficient means of connecting the solution to the problem? The challenge then is to how best to monitor or determine whether the advice being given is credible and not just a pitch for the company’s products. Vendors must participate responsibility in opened forums by providing sincere advice. Transparency helps, but the content of the information must be scientifically sound as well. One great aspect of the opened communications provided by the web is that it is self-correcting because the broad variety of participants have the opportunity, and responsibility, to question something that seems amiss. Ultimately, however, it does come down to the credibility of the source and this determination rests primarily with the receivers of the information.
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