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validating their claims. True.com emphasizes that it is the only site which had its methodology certified by an independent auditor. True.com’s chief psychologist James Houran is particularly dismissive of eHarmony’s data claims. “I’ve seen no evidence they even conducted any study that forms the basis of their test,” Houran says. “If you’re touting that you’re doing something scientific…you inform the academic community.”
    eHarmony is responding by providing some evidence that their matching system works. It sponsored a Harris poll suggesting that eHarmony is now producing about ninety marriages a day (that’s over 30,000 a year). This is better than nothing, but it’s only a modest success because with more than five million members, these marriages represent about only a 1 percent chance that your $50 fee will produce a walk down the aisle. The competitors are quick to dismiss the marriage number. Yahoo!’s Thompson has said you have a better chance of finding your future spouse if you “go hang out at the Safeway.”
    eHarmony also claims that it has evidence that its married couples are in fact more compatible. Its researchers presented last year to the American Psychological Society their finding that married couples who found each other through eHarmony were significantly happier than couples married for a similar length of time who met by other means. There are some serious weaknesses with this study, but the big news for me is that the major matching sites are not just Super Crunching to develop their algorithms; they’re Super Crunching to prove that their algorithms got it right.
    The matching algorithms of these services aren’t, however, completely data-driven. All the services rely at least partially on the conscious preferences of their clients (regardless of whether these preferences are valid predictors of compatibility). eHarmony allows clients to discriminate on the race of potential mates. Even though it’s only acting on the wishes of its clients, matching services that discriminate by race may violate a statute dating back to the Civil War that prohibits race discrimination in contracting. Think about it. eHarmony is a for-profit company that takes $50 from black clients and refuses to treat them the same (match them with the same people) as some white clients. A restaurant would be in a lot of trouble if it refused to seat Hispanic customers in a section where customers had stated a preference to have “Anglos only.”
    eHarmony has gotten into even more trouble for its refusal to match same-sex couples. The founder’s wife and senior vice president, Marylyn Warren, has claimed that “eHarmony is meant for everybody. We do not discriminate in any way.” This is clearly false. They would refuse to match two men even if, based on their answers to the company’s 436 questions, the computer algorithm picked them to be the most compatible. There’s a sad irony here. eHarmony, unlike its competitors, insists that similar people are the best matches. When it comes to gender, it insists that opposites attract. Out of the top ten matching sites, eHarmony is the only one that doesn’t offer same-sex matching.
    Why is eHarmony so out of step? Its refusal to match gay and lesbian clients, even in Massachusetts where same-sex marriage is legal, seems counter to the company’s professed goal of helping people find lasting and satisfying marriage partners. Warren is a self-described “passionate Christian” who for years worked closely with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. eHarmony is only willing to facilitate certain types of legal marriages regardless of what the statistical algorithm says. In fact, because the algorithm is not public, it is possible that eHarmony puts a normative finger on the scale to favor certain clients.
    But the big idea behind these new matching services—the