Winner of the 2021 Bug Bounty - Laura Falkiner

Every year the Misinformation Lab runs a “bug bounty” program to incentivise staff and students to detect (and report) errors in research conducted in the lab. Points are awarded for detecting errors before or after studies are conducted and are scaled according to the severity of the error that is detected (i.e. more serious errors are given more points in the program).

The winner of the program is awarded a (small) cash prize at the end of each year.

This year, the winner of our Bug Bounty program is Laura Falkiner. This reflects her keen attention to detail, her commitment to open science and transparency, and her willingness to assist in the development and evaluation of studies outside of her own research project. Of note, in addition to detecting potential errors in studies that were due to be launched, Laura also detected an omission in an open source software project (gendercoder) and filed a issue on github to ensure that the software could be improved. This will have benefits not only for researchers within the lab who routinely use the software but will also benefit the broader scientific community. Great work Laura!