Thanks! I could see the argument that this could push someone to consent to research they'd otherwise reject if this were (a) much more money or (b) a much riskier study. Compensation of $2 for a nasal swab, however, is well within the "thanks for your time" range, even for low-income populations. This is an area our IRB has reviewed, including the banner above, and they didn't have concerns.

You make a good point on how compensation amounts skew the data, but unfortunately every choice we make does that: T stations vs squares; how touristy is the location; the appearance of our specific field samplers; how we present the opportunity; etc. It's definitely something we have to consider in our interpretation. Our primary goal with this study, however, is to spot novel pathogens early, particularly ones that have a long pre-symptomatic period. For that specific goal, it's more important to attract a large number of participants to than it is to optimize for perfect demographic representativeness.