In the recent months, I have received many e-mails from a “The Science Advisory Board”, asking me to participate in their surveys. Supposedly, they are a group of researchers that do research related surveys with academics they find in the web.

Of course, because of their e-mail style, the randomness of it, and their offer of “amazon gift certificates”, I always considered they were just one more kind of spammers, and promptly dumped most of their messages.

But after getting a lot of messages from these guys recently, I decided to do some searching. In fact, this SAB actually has a webpage, with an active forum in it — something I would not expect from a spammer. Also, it doesn’t seem very smart for a spammer to target only academics.

So maybe I’m growing soft, but I decided to take one of their tests. If they asked for any personal information, I could just feed them garbage. The first question they ask me is about some chemical experimental method I have never heard about. I answer accordingly, and to my surprise, the quiz ends there: “sorry, we didn’t know you don’t use this. Thanks anyway”.

Hmmmmm.

So, Science Advisory Board: Spammers, innocent quackery, or actually something serious? Anyone has experiences to share?