Love is no coincidence - what do you think about DNA matching services?

Right up there with pheremones and astrology. Just another scam.

There’s no way (IMO) that we have even an inkling of how the complexities of the genome interact in something so nebulous as personality, and that also ignores the influence of “nuture” (of the nature vs. nurture argument).

Yuck. Scary. Brave New World sort of stuff.

What an off-putting idea.

Terrifying, decadent, and sad. Wow.

If ya can’t charm the socks off of someone you fancy, DNA compatibility sure won’t do you much good ;-)

Even if it was true and possible, the magic would be lost and I love the magic in this world.

ewwwww…

A gimmick to extract money from the desperate, credulous, and those with a little too much money to burn.

Call BS

Looks like it’s using good science. But it could be misusing good science. The idea is that if you mate with people who have different immunity than you, you will have stronger kids. Also if you take into account certain other things (I didn’t read it all), you’ll do better. It’s possible. I think you could use gene matching and still have all the room for magic you need.

With the exception of the ‘eugenics’ aspect of this process, I am no more horrified by it as a method of selecting potential dates than by the more usual ‘dating service’ methods. I also don’t have a great deal of confidence in it being very reliable. It would be interesting to see how many couples who use this service are together at the end of 10 years as compared with the usual ‘lonely hearts’ type service.

Meh. Not worth a damn, IMHO. I met my soulmate at a keg party of all places. Genomes? We don’t need no stinking genomes! :D

I’m with @syz on this:

pseudo-science

It has the trappings of science about it, but who’s to say that “DNA matches” really mean that much. With that logic I should be dating and mating with my sister, shouldn’t I?

I think it’s basically a marketing ploy. Evolution has been doing fine with our current system of finding mates. There are thousands of mating strategies and that is good. One more won’t be a problem, and I’m sure it will help some people. But I really don’t think it matters.

Dating services have all kinds of match algorithms. I suspect few work any better than anything we already do for ourselves. In particular, I suspect that seeing someone and being attracted to them is just fine as a mechanism for matching people. I bet it works just as well as anything else.

I don’t see what your genome has to do with finding the love of your life. Now if you want to know what your child will look like when they’re all grown up then that’s just fine. Here’s what Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison’s child will look like as an adult.

No wonder they’ve had so many issues.

The hell happened to finding love the normal way?

You mean, in bars and discos?

and graveyards

There was a documentary about them on German television. I was somewhat appalled as well. I wouldn’t compare it with astrology. Their approach is based on real science, but perhaps bad science or bad application of good science. Claus Wedekind is a real professor and the t-shirt study was a real study. I’m just a bit skeptical that it’s that straightforward to match compatible immune system from looking at the genomes.

@Symbeline, you mean when you go to church?

I’ll try anything once.