The Science of Chemistry

Q: I have an inquiry about Internet dating and relationship Web sites. At least one claims in its advertising to Use science to match up potential mates, But I'm skeptical. Is there any truth to That?--R. Harwood

A: Online dating is a huge business with dozens of Web sites offering clients the chance to find love in cyberspace. Dating services, like many other businesses, like to adopt the veneer of scientific validity. While anyone can set up a Web-based dating profile-matching system, Web sites such as eHarmony.com and Chemistry.com claim to use science to help people find love, romance, or just a quick dip in the gene pool.

EHarmony is perhaps the best-known dating service claiming to mix science with seduction. According to the company's Web site, its marriage profile was "developed by a team of clinical experts ... [and] is rooted in classical psychometric theory--which uses well-established standards to measure mental abilities and traits in a reliable way." It all sounds very scientific. I picture Kate Winslet in a slinky black dress under a white lab coat, mixing a beaker of crimson sex appeal and cool blue psychometric theory.

Yet there are serious questions about the validity of eHarmony's much-vaunted "scientific, twenty-nine-dimension" tests. Does their "science" greatly improve the quality or odds of a match? How good is their tests' construct validity? After all, many matches are made without a hint or claim of scientific basis for the pairing. Though the company and its founder, Neil Warren, insist that the tests are useful, they have yet to be scientifically validated. (EHarmony, incidentally, does not offer services for finding same-sex partners, because Warren, an evangelical Christian, does not believe homosexuality should be encouraged)

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Steven Carter, director of research at eHarmony, wrote an article in the February 2005 issue of the Association for Psychological Science's Observer. Carter had the opportunity to offer data and evidence that his work at eHarmony (and indeed the company's premise) has some validity, but instead wrote warmly about how helpful his work was to lonely singles and purred that "working at eHarmony has, in many ways, been a dream job."

While Carter offered little support for his claims, he did state that "to date, we estimate that over nine thousand eHarmony couples have married." This statistic, if true, clearly doesn't tell the whole story, as it cherry-picks the successes and omits the failures: how many of the eHarmony matches were incompatible? If, by one count, there are over five million eHarmony members looking for matches or marriage, nine thousand may not seem like a very impressive success ratio. Furthermore, the real question is how many of those nine thousand marriages lasted longer than average? For all we know, most of the eHarmony couples may have since divorced.

The APS Observer column, a de facto advertisement for eHarmony, was roundly criticized. One respondent, Maureen Olmsted of Arizona State University, noted in a letter to the editor about the article that, "A search of PsychInfo found no papers published by Nell Clark Warren on the topic of relationships.... If Warren has thirty-five years of experience studying marriage, why hasn't he published it?"

EHarmony has many hallmarks of pseudoscience, including a reluctance to subject their claims and data to peer review. Until they can back up their claims, single skeptical and science-minded folk may want to check out Science Connection (www.SciConnect. com) to help them identify potential partners; the dating service has been around since 1995 and has led to more than a few consummated couplings. According to the Web site, "The world is a crowded Petri dish, and yet for those of an intellectual bent who happen to be single, it's not easy, especially past university age, to find that certain microbe for a great symbiotic relationship."

Reference

Epstein, Robert. 2007. The truth about online dating. Scientific American Mind, February/ March, p. 33.

Benjamin Radford is a writer and investigator with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry His Web site is at www.RadfordBooks.com.

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