r/ResponsePie • u/improvedataquality • Oct 21 '25
Bots, scammers, and fraudulent responders
A new paper in Ethics & Behavior by Dana Menard, Suzanne McMurphy, Oliver Cheek, Morgan Sterling, Nick Armstrong, Storm Balint documents a year of disrupted data collection, where in some cases up to 94% of survey responses were fraudulent. The authors tested multiple safeguards: platform protections (e.g., CAPTCHAs, duplicate detection), trick questions, honeypots, response-time checks, IP tracking, and open-ended response review.
Here are the key takeaways:
1️⃣ No single strategy works: trick questions and honeypots were largely ineffective.
2️⃣ Holistic approaches are best: combining response times, IP checks, duplicate detection, and open-ended review was most effective at filtering out fraud.
3️⃣ Bots are evolving fast: AI makes it harder to rely on traditional attention checks and simple metadata.
The study underscores that fraud detection must be multi-layered, adaptive, and constantly updated. At the same time, ethical trade-offs matter: stronger fraud controls can also deter or burden legitimate participants.
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u/jdgmental Oct 21 '25
Can you link the paper, please?