I’ve written about the extremely dodgy “science” used to justify the matchmaking abilities of big subscription dating sites before. Now the University of Arkansas have officially labeled matching algorithms as junk science.

Psychology professor Jeffrey Lohr and two psychology graduates, Aimee King and Deena Austin-Oden, analyzed several leading dating Web sites and found that promotional claims were more self-serving opinion than legitimate psychological science.

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Even when the dating services cite scientific evidence, consumers don’t always get all the facts. In an eHarmony comparison, the researchers found that the site neglected to reveal that they compared their couples, who were married only an average of six months (the “honeymoon period”), to couples in the control group who were married an average of two years. The researchers said that opinions expressed during the honeymoon period should not be compared to the opinions of couples after the honeymoon is over.

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Many Web sites make claims that they cannot substantiate. For instance, Match.com claims that they are responsible for “twice as many marriages as any other site in the world.” The site measures success according to the number of marriages. However, Match.com does not use divorce to measure failure and thus cannot offer scientific research to support the usefulness of their claim.

It’s the dating industry’s dirty secret. People choose partners based on “…proximity, physical attractiveness and attitudinal similarity, a sense of rapport and similarities or self-disclosure.” Every time people from different backgrounds meet they fall in love. Look at all the families formed in Veitnam of people on opposite sides of a war. Similarity is over-rated and yet that’s all most sites measure.

Proximity is something no website can affect, attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder, rapport is hard to build, and easy to lose, over email; and self disclosure is actively discouraged by sites which make photos and real names optional.

If only there was an open, honest, face-to-face, dating site that let people choose their dates based on attraction rapport and honesty…? That would be awesome.

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