Matchmaking sites short on the science? ... Get out

A pre-Valentine's Day cautionary tale from The Institute of What Did You Expect

A group of bitter, bitter researchers has chosen this generally joyous run-up to the holy day of romance as their opportunity to issue "a sweeping review of scientific studies" that allegedly shows dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony fail to apply to their matchmaking the same scientific rigor normally associated with, say, astrology.

(Valentine's Day Google Doodles through the years)

From an IDG News Service story on our site: "Companies have not made their algorithms [for matching potential mates] available to the public, nor even to regulatory authorities. Nobody knows what the algorithms are," said Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. "It is certainly possible they have some magic formula no one has looked at that could in fact be effective. However, there is no evidence for that."

In other words, it's like the eTrade baby telling the guy who's building his retirement account using scratch tickets: "You realize that the odds of winning are the same as being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear in the same day?"

And then rubbing it in with: "I want to show you something; it's my shocked face."

Yes, I realize I'm being overly harsh and that these sites undoubtedly have directed many a lonely heart to everlasting love.

But perhaps my dismissal of online dating "science" has been overly influenced by a long-ago personal experience: As a young, single, yet strangely unattached reporter for the local newspaper back in the early '80s, I was asked to write a first-person story about what was then called "computer dating."

In the interest of brevity, let's just say the match was utterly inexplicable and the date didn't go well.

Of course, the technology has no doubt gotten better since then.

Well, probably. The point the killjoy researchers are making is that we just don't know.

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• E-commerce
• eHarmony
• Match.com
• online dating