
Using Mechanical Turk to hide a surgeon's domestic violence charge - evan_
https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1143583269730082816
======
sunkensheep
It's just "blackhat" SEO. Reminds me of a scheme in China where a company sold
fake medicines and astro-turfed their way into appearing as a major supplier.
So long as our view of the internet is governed by opaque algorithms with no
oversight, gaming them will be profitable.

~~~
lilbobbytables
And if they weren't opaque, gaming them would be even easier.

~~~
yellowapple
Security by obscurity ain't security, though. If they weren't opaque, at least
we as a society would be better equipped to keep up with the algorithmic
exploitation arms race.

~~~
cbsmith
I think, unfortunately, that is naive. While security through obscurity ain't
security, there is something to be said for obfuscation of a system that
people are trying to game.

~~~
yellowapple
That's the point, though: if a system is so fragile that anyone with knowledge
of its inner workings can game it or otherwise exploit it, then it is not and
was never secure (nor can it ever be while it continues to be opaque).

I say this enough to be a broken record, but transparency is a dependency of
trust.

~~~
cbsmith
This isn't a trusted system though. The data it consumes and indexes, the
people who use it, etc. are not trusted.

You are effectively saying poker would be better if everyone's cards were face
up.

~~~
yellowapple
> This isn't a trusted system though.

Well yeah, obviously, given that it ain't transparent.

> You are effectively saying poker would be better if everyone's cards were
> face up.

You are effectively saying that an ideal system is one that we'd have to treat
like a poker game.

Even assuming the premise here holds true (that a transparent system will be
more easily gamed by more people), that'd ultimately be better than the opaque
case. The more people who are able to game a system, the less one individual
can effectively game it for one's own individual benefit at the expense of
everyone else in that system.

~~~
cbsmith
I thought of a better way to express this that might make sense to you.

In security, total transparency isn't effective. You want as much transparency
as possible, but you need secrets for the system to work (usually
passwords/certs/passphrases).

Now, there isn't a password/certs/passphrase in this context, so the secrecy
is instead in the model.

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taneem
Title is incorrect. This is not on Mechanical Turk. Tasks like this are not
allowed on MTurk as per TOS. The original tweet author says so on the thread.

~~~
reaperducer
I didn't read it as being part of MTurk. "Mechanical turk" was a thing for
hundreds of years before Amazon named it's service.

~~~
tomnipotent
> "Mechanical turk" was a thing for hundreds of years before Amazon named it's
> service.

In the context of crowdsourced labor, it absolutely implies Amazon.

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londons_explore
That will be insanely effective.

Doing that just ~10 times (with independant users/profiles) will probably
eliminate those results when the ML model is next trained. Assuming this Dr
isn't a celebrity, he probably doesn't get more than a few searches per month,
so 10 in the same day will be a massive signal.

Note to person behind this: It will have even more impact if each turker is
instructed to click _only one_ of the desired links. Clicking "back" to a
google search result is a strong signal that the page you clicked didn't
answer your query.

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jakestuart
Does this really work? I would assume Google would detect this repeated
pattern pretty easily.

~~~
evan_
I think so, at least to some degree. Someone's certainly bet money on the
theory that it works.

When I first saw this tweet, a search for "Dr. Paul Drago" (in an incognito
window) consistently returned a glowing blog post first and the domestic
violence article second. Hours later, those results are consistently reversed.
Could be random, could be that people who saw this tweet are intentionally
clicking the news article he's trying to bury.

~~~
brokensegue
or could be google took manual action

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devoply
[https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26...](https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26/greenville-
physician-charged-domestic-violence/74809748/)

Should a person be banned from working because they physically assaulted
someone. Seems to be that lots of people think so, despite that fact that many
more people than are convicted commit these sorts of crimes. Didn't take much
more than to type the name into Google News and click on the link on the page.

~~~
Someone1234
If you click the second image:

\- "Accused doctor wasn't certified in plastic surgery"[0]

\- "11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs"[1]

\- "Plastic surgeon - Paul Drago - Plastic surgery from hell"[2]

I'd say the accusations here are more than just DV.

[0] [https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-
wasnt...](https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-wasnt-
certified-in-plastic-surgery/374891066)

[1] [https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-
surgeon-...](https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-surgeon-
botched-jobs/)

[2] [https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-
paul-d...](https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-drago-
plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/)

~~~
cantrevealname
> _11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs_

If I told you that the 3M Company had 2192 lawsuits[1] of all types filed
against them in the the last 4 years, what does that tell you? Are they a
terrible company getting sued at lot or a incredibly nice company that barely
ever gets sued for a company that large?

Plastic surgeons are among the most sued professions. To know whether 11
lawsuits are significant, you'd have to know the rate at which plastic
surgeons are sued, how many surgeries this guy did, what period those 11
surgeries represent, and possibly even weight it with the difficulty of the
surgeries (because if he's taking on high risk surgeries that other doctors
decline, he'll have more failures). _Maybe_ 11 lawsuits in a 4-year period is
an excellent track record for someone doing thousands of high-risk surgeries
in an ultra-litigious medical specialty.

[1] Completely made up that number.

~~~
Someone1234
The first link says the North Carolina Medical Board just pulled his license.
And a "nationally recognized and board certified plastic surgeon" said the
doctor had no training to perform plastic surgery (only general surgery as all
doctors receive).

So I'm not sure why you're trying to make some artificial point in isolation
about lawsuits being meaningless, other doctors clearly think badly of his
practice of medicine, to the point that they've stopped him doing so.

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indolering
In the past, Google claimed to not use clickstream data because of how easy it
is to manipulate. Have they changed their tune or are they just targeting
Bing?

------
aussieguy1234
It's probably worth noting this guy has a very unique name, therefore negative
news stories about him are much more likely to go to the front page of
results, since few other people with the same name would get any publicity.

------
yipbub
It seems to have worked. Googling the Dr. Paul Drago doesn't show any of these
articles unless you use keywords mentioned in the Do-Not-Click titles.

I made sure to click on them.

~~~
millzlane
I did it a few times. When I google Dr. Paul Drago. I do seem some of the
articles. That may be because I've click a few of the links and have done the
search a few times. Also The [https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-
surgeon-paul-d...](https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-
drago-plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/) link also appears on the second page
now.

------
dlphn___xyz
whats the point of doing this if a simple record check could reveal his court
records?(assuming these charges are real)

~~~
wnevets
Is that something you usually do when picking a new Dr.?

~~~
geezerjay
Honest question: how should someone's domestic violence charge affect your
choice of surgeon?

~~~
anigbrowl
Are you kidding? Someone who can't control their anger isn't someone you want
poking around your insides with a scalpel. If such a person makes an error
during an operation, do you really think they'll be transparent about it?

~~~
geezerjay
> Someone who can't control their anger isn't someone you want poking around
> your insides with a scalpel.

If the surgeon is prone to violence fits as you claim he might be, wouldn't it
show on his track record as a surgeon?

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LawnDart1
am I the only one who searched for dr paul drago and clicked on the greenville
doctor article to redress the balance?

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subsubsub
Is this astroturfing? I thought the term referred to fake grass roots
movements (Astro Turf being the brand name for that fake grass you sometimes
see).

As a previous commenter said, this is more like grey/blackhat SEO.

~~~
jjeaff
No, the term predates fake grass roots movements. It comes from using fake
grass to cover up an ugly yard.

So creating fake or useless media attention to distract or cover up something
you don't want people to see.

~~~
zamadatix
Googling around I can't find anything that agrees with this but I see an
overwhelming number of sites referring to the origin as related to the grass
roots meaning with the popular origin from Lloyd Bentsen in 1985.

Not that it couldn't have just been overrun since that time I just couldn't
find anything to support your claim.

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not_a_cop75
I, for one, welcome our new Machine Learning Overlords.

~~~
optimuspaul
Mechanical turk is the opposite of machine learning

~~~
gojomo
Here, though, it's being used to provide fake signals to a true machine-
learning algorithm – Google's clicktrail-influenced ranking. So more of a
'complement' than an 'opposite'.

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bsder
Um, the fact that his medical license has already been suspended by one state
is much more problematic than his domestic violence charge, thanks.

Let's be outraged about the correct problem, please ...

~~~
kennywinker
I’m not outraged about the specifics, i’m intrigued about the astroturfing. If
this worked, it could and probably is being applied to all kinds of things...

