Flash mob studies: a novel method to accelerate the research process.

Because the time between study conception and dissemination of findings generally takes long, efforts to reduce this lag are important. A solution to accelerate the research process can be found in flash mob research. This is a method to study clinically relevant questions on a large scale in a very short course of time. The research question and the set-up of the study should be exciting. Doing so, it attracts a large 'mob' of people who collect the data. Consequently, the generalizability of flash mob studies may be higher than that of traditional research studies.