A few weeks ago I went hiking around Lake Tahoe, and at a local coffee shop I couldn’t help overhearing a bunch of middle-aged women enthusing wildly about a new service which matches you up with someone based on your genetic profiles. They noticed my gawking and so I stopped listening, but honestly I was somewhat worried that they were so credulous. A Slate piece, Online dating sites use DNA to make perfect matches. Does it really work?, hits most of the major issues that I have with these services. As noted in the Slate review the various results attempting to correlate MHC profiles with attraction have been mixed at best (i.e., they don’t seem particularly robust). But the bigger issue to me is that even if there is a modest population-wide effect which has an underlying evolutionary basis, it is unlikely to be one of the parameters impacting relationship success. What I mean is that even if immune profile matching (or lack thereof) matters, it matters far less than other variables which are much more visible and obvious. For example, physical attraction and cultural compatibility.
Genetics is real. It’s powerful. It matters. And that means all sorts of snake-oil salesmen will start to enter the field to make money. No surprise. The reality is that for most things that matter you already know the likely genetic outcome. Look at the parents.
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