Hi, a few thoughts.

This survey is not paid employment, so we're not striving to meet minimum wage.

Re Flash, youtube, etc. Thanks for pointing that out, and that the old study was still up. The task is working great, for the most part. If you know of a better way to deploy a task such as that efficiently, freely, and across as many users as possible, let me know.

Relationships, though central to psychological and physical health, are very difficult to study because they're so complicated and underfunded. This is why we have the eligibility criteria that we have (to control for variables that will allow us to target the processes we're interested in) and why we can only afford to pay what we're offering. Securing the funding that we do have was incredibly difficult. We're fortunate to be able to pay the $60.

Further to that point: many people are willing to participate in relationships research because they think it's inherently interesting and important. For many people, receiving any money at all is a bonus.

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve by reverse engineering the eligibility survey. You realize that doing so and notifying people of what you found is harming our research efforts, right?

I'm also curious as to why you'd do that, and invest the time in this. This research is in the interest of the greater good. No financial gain, no commercial application. In fact, it's an area of research that in which one stands to gain very little in terms of big grants, commercial application, etc. And you are sabotaging it, intentionally or not.

I'm putting years of my time into this research and training to do it well (10 years and counting), and making absurdly little money while doing so (in fact, going into debt), because I think basic research into relationship well being is very important.

How about you? Why are you putting the time into interfering with this, and in other subreddits?

I'm sure you realize that I have to pull this invitation down due to your comments, right? I think it's fair and reasonable to tell you that that's a really shitty thing to do.

David de Jong