scientificmatch.com promises to find your perfect match based on analysis of your DNA: “Our patent-pending technology uses your DNA to find others with a natural odour you’ll love, with whom you’d have healthier children, a more satisfying sex life, and more”, they say.
They quote a lot of research to argue how nature created us to avoid people with similar immunity genes in order to avoid inbreeding and produce healthier babies..they offer to help us with this choice for some reason (I guess the reason is so they can make money during this process).
The founder is an engineer who ‘spent years on researching about what scientists have discovered about human chemical attraction’. I’m a biologist and I think it would be difficult to spend more than couple of days to get a good feel for what scientists have discovered about human chemical attraction: really not all that much.
Although I’m all up for research on evolution of human sexuality, is this the way the society is going to misinterpret the results?
I believe as genotyping will get cheaper we will more of these kind of scams. Matchmaking is a huge industry with probably more than its share of people claiming to make the perfect partner for you. Given that hard data on the success of a particular technique is notoriously hard to come by, these kind of companies can claim to be better than the old fashioned way. I wonder if they can be forced to provide information on how they’ve tested their hypothesis.