How Amazon’s crowdsourcing forum, Mechanical Turk, could be destroying academic research

For years, undergraduates wielded astonishing — and mostly secret – power in this country. The reason: college students were the dominant group serving as test subjects in academic research.

The various studies conducted by universities — in disciplines ranging from economics to health to psychology — play a key role in determining government policy and even shaping our view of ourselves. That meant the responses of 19- and 20-year-old across the land cumulatively carried weight.

But over the past decade a new group of test subjects has risen up to increasingly take the place of college kids and others who participate in academic studies. And this might not be a good thing.

By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian/OregonLive

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