Yes, favorable internet evaluations be purchased.

While internet rating sites for physicians in the US have been around for a number of years and a number of specialized sites are now part of the online health landscape (HealthGrades, RateMDs, and others), this is not the case in Europe in general, and France in particular, despite the presence of Yelp, GoogleMaps, and other US-based sites that allow for physician ratings. Health care professionals in France believe that physician rating will lead to either a) friendly reciprocal reviews amongst professionals (I'll evaluate you, you'll evaluate me, and we'll all evaluate each other) or b) unjustifiedly negative patient reviews. There is simply insufficient trust in crowdsourcing re docs. While French sites such as Le Guide Santé and Hôpital.fr do allow patients to rate hospitals and clinics, they don't provide for ratings of the individual professional. What's the latest on this front?

The recent article in the New York Times entitled "5-star web reviews go for $5" will  provide further fodder for those who think that consumer reviews pose authenticity issues. While the article does not speak of health care,  it demonstrates that a purchased laudatory review can be successfully blended into a rating site which is not going to help the cause of physician review sites in Europe. A Cornell team purchased and injected 400 false positive ratings into a hotel site. Uninformed users were unable to see the difference between the false and genuine evaluations.

In addition, RateMds.com states on its site that a company called MedicalJustice has been posting purchased reviews on ratemds.com despite the illegality of same. This is demonstrated by the ip addresses of the review "authors."

Who is at fault here? Not the portal publishers, but the two parties whose interests are served by these reviews: those whose services are being promoted and the company serving as a profit-making intermediary.

A further complication is the fact that positive evaluations are more frequent, because positively-evaluated products sell more and therefore generate more reviews. A Cornell sociologist reminds us of an old quote, "in our town, everyone is above average..." ;-)

Authenticity is an issue in the world of social media as it currently exists, as some recent well-known cases have demonstrated. Cornell's team is hoping that their algorithms will be able to detect non-authentic reviews...surely a big market for that if it works!