My name is Aideen Lawlor and I am a PhD candidate in the School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland. I am looking for your help with my research project. The aim of my project is to develop software that can detect people who are faking illness online. Essentially the software would be able to analyse a piece of text posted by a member of an online community, by simply copying and pasting the text written by the suspected faker into the software programme. The software programme would then produce the likelihood of the text being written by a person who is faking illness.
In order to create this software programme I need to collect online text communications from people who have faked illness online. So that I can identify the unique writing style of those faking illness online and use this information to create the software.
Therefore I am asking, providing you are over 18, if you could provide me with the screen names and forums of people you know who have faked illness online either by admitting to their deceptive behaviour or leaving the forum once exposed.
You can contact me with this information either through direct message or my email address [email protected].
If you would like more information about the project and faking illness online you can visit my website, www.fakingillnessonline.com. The website also contains links for finding a psychologist in your region if you are experiencing emotional distress due to your contact with such individuals.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Kind Regards,
Aideen Lawlor
(Permission received from Peter Waite)