Online dating service eHarmony is being forced to remove one of its billboard ads from the London Underground after claiming it can match people based on scientific evidence.
Brought to the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority by one not-so-convinced consumer, the complainant – Lord Lipsey, joint chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on statistics and a former member of the ASA – said it was not possible to hold scientific proof about a dating system and the ad was therefore misleading.
“Step aside, fate. It’s time science had a go at love,” the ad begins.
“Imagine being able to stack the odds of finding lasting love entirely in your favour. eHarmony’s scientifically proven matching system decodes the mystery of compatibility and chemistry so you don’t have to. Why leave the most important search of your life to chance?”
Quick to defend itself, eHarmony said the definition of science was something that was “based on or characterised by the methods or principles of science” – and that the ad did not make any specific claims except that their matching system was scientific and could therefore “provide an advantage in finding a compatible partner over a purely chance-based system or meeting”.
This involved a ‘compatibility matching algorithm’ based on data collected from 50,000 married couples across 23 different countries, which looked at core personality traits and key values.
eHarmony said the research resulted in statistical models which were associated with cut-off thresholds for scores that indicated a high probability of successful relationships if married – and that the algorithm was based on scientific theories in the “relationship literature of assortative mating”.
Unfortunately for eHarmony, it looks like Cupid’s arrow flew straight past the ASA on this occasion, which deemed the ad to be misleading and banned it from appearing again in its current form.
Perhaps some things are best left up to fate.
