Two multibillion dollar industries - do they work?
Weight loss is a massive business in the US and online dating is large and growing rapidly. Both attempt to satisfy very deeply seated desires and both have a lot of customers. It seems reasonable to examine how effective they are.
Weight loss is certainly possible with hundreds of businesses and thousands of self help books helping people take in less energy than they use. Losing weight can take a lot of effort, but millions of people do it every year. One of the problems is a good fraction of those millions turn out to be the same people.
It turns out the regulation of metabolism is a complex thing and cultural issues associated with food and exercise are equally complex. As science probes these questions it is becoming clear that, while a reasonable percentage of people can lose weight, the percentage who keep it off for even a few years is very small. It appears if someone has become overweight for some length of time - probably at least six months - their metabolism is permanently lowered, but their hunger levels remain high. They begin to overeat relative to the level of someone who has always been at their current weight. Frequently all of the weight - or even more - is regained.
Many researchers say "one of the best ways to gain weight is to go on a diet" ... The community is beginning to talk about getting people as healthy as they can be at their current weights with additional exercise and good nutrition and recommend weight loss only when people are dangerously overweight. They feel the place to focus efforts are on the young - it is critically important to make sure they never become overweight in the first place.
"Overweight", although the societal norm at nearly 70% of the adult population in the US, is still not considered "beautiful" or "young". It seems likely the weight loss industry will be in good shape for a long long time. If science can provide interventions that regulate weight, it is likely they will become very popular - even if there are unhealthy side effects.
Online dating is another interesting business. Millions want to find serious romantic parters and a few large businesses have emerged to create what they advertise as high probability matches. The ads sometimes suggest a science based selection.
The problem is these services don't meet the standards of the scientific method. There methods aren't testable by peers, and it is unlikely, given the sort of information they take the tests could even be cleanly done. Science requires a hypothesis be falsifiable. Basically the logical possibility that an assertion, hypothesis or theory can be contradicted by an empirical observation.1 If you can't do that it isn't science.
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. - Richard Feynman
The claims of "science" are not universal in this business, but billions are spent and it is reasonable to probe how effective this approach is. A nice paper was recently published that addresses the question (pdf).2
Great businesses for different reasons.
One is not effective in the long term and ensures a growing number of customers who are serial failures. They may jump around from plan to plan in a nearly hopeless effort to find something that works.3 The other addresses a fundamental human need and tries to make it somehow easier. Much is lost in the initial communication and the matching techniques may be non-robust. It is likely that many of the approaches will produce a higher percentage of solutions than conventional techniques. Work needs to be done to settle that question. Online dating is also fascinating in that it is an example of "big data" that may not have very much behind it. Getting to the right questions and adding the right information is what is critical.4
note: based on a discussion with one of the readers I want to point out I am not dissing online dating. It obviously works for some and doesn't for others. What I do object to is the marketing use of "scientific" as it fails that defnition. Since so many people use it and spend so much, it would be reasonable to better understand what is going on - perhaps to learn where it is applicable and where it isn't. The paper is a good starting point.
Also - "big data" is very much in vogue these days. To be useful it must be coupled with intelligent questions. Frequently it isn't and since humans are good at finding patterns, a lot of false patterns are being "discovered".
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1 Falsifiability does not mean something is "false", but rather that if it is false a repeatable empirical observation or experiment will produce a result in conflict with it. When falsifiability is applied to pseudosciences like astrology, much of the global warming denialism examples, homeopathic medicine, intelligent design, etc. - the theories and assertions that underlie them are quickly rendered false.
2 Abstract
Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science
Eli J. Finkel, Paul W. Eastwick, Benjamin R. Karney, Harry T. Reis, and Susan Sprecher
Northwestern University; Texas A & M University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Rochester; and Illinois State University
Abstract
Online dating sites frequently claim that they have fundamentally altered the dating landscape for the better. This article employs psychological science to examine (a) whether online dating is fundamentally different from conventional offline dating and (b) whether online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating.The answer to the first question (uniqueness) is yes, and the answer to the second question (superiority) is yes and no. To understand how online dating fundamentally differs from conventional offline dating and the circumstances under which online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating, we consider the three major services online dating sites offer: access, communication, and matching. Access refers to users’ exposure to and opportunity to evaluate potential romantic partners they are otherwise unlikely to encounter. Communication refers to users’ opportunity to use various forms of computer- mediated communication (CMC) to interact with specific potential partners through the dating site before meeting face-to- face. Matching refers to a site’s use of a mathematical algorithm to select potential partners for users. Regarding the uniqueness question, the ways in which online dating sites implement these three services have indeed fundamentally altered the dating landscape. In particular, online dating, which has rapidly become a pervasive means of seeking potential partners, has altered both the romantic acquaintance process and the compatibility matching process. For example, rather than meeting potential partners, getting a snapshot impression of how well one interacts with them, and then slowly learning various facts about them, online dating typically involves learning a broad range of facts about potential partners before deciding whether one wants to meet them in person. Rather than relying on the intuition of village elders, family members, or friends or to select which pairs of unacquainted singles will be especially compatible, certain forms of online dating involve placing one’s romantic fate in the hands of a mathematical matching algorithm.Turning to the superiority question, online dating has important advantages over conventional offline dating. For example, it offers unprecedented (and remarkably convenient) levels of access to potential partners, which is especially helpful for singles who might otherwise lack such access. It also allows online daters to use CMC to garner an initial sense of their compatibility with potential partners before deciding whether to meet them face-to-face. In addition, certain dating sites may be able to collect data that allow them to banish from the dating pool people who are likely to be poor relationship partners in general. On the other hand, the ways online dating sites typically implement the services of access, communication, and matching do not always improve romantic outcomes; indeed, they sometimes undermine such outcomes. Regarding access, encountering potential partners via online dating profiles reduces three-dimensional people to two-dimensional displays of information, and these displays fail to capture those experiential aspects of social interaction that are essential to evaluating one’s compatibility with potential partners. In addition, the ready access to a large pool of potential partners can elicit an evaluative, assessment-oriented mindset that leads online daters to objectify potential partners and might even undermine their willingness to commit to one of them. It can also cause people to make lazy, ill-advised decisions when selecting among the large array of potential partners. Regarding communication, although online daters can benefit from having short-term CMC with potential partners before meeting them face-to-face, longer periods of CMC prior to a face-to-face meeting may actually hurt people’s romantic prospects. In particular, people tend to over interpret the social cues available in CMC, and if CMC proceeds unabated without a face-to-face reality check, subsequent face-to-face meetings can produce unpleasant expectancy violations.As CMC lacks the experiential richness of a face-to-face encounter, some important information about potential partners is impossible to glean from CMC alone; most users will want to meet a potential partner in person to integrate their CMC and face-to-face impressions into a coherent whole before pursuing a romantic relationship. Regarding matching, no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work—that they foster romantic outcomes that are superior to those fostered by other means of pairing partners. Part of the problem is that matching sites build their mathematical algorithms around principles—typically similarity but also complementarity—that are much less important to relationship well-being than has long been assumed. In addition, these sites are in a poor position to know how the two partners will grow and mature over time, what life circumstances they will confront and coping responses they will exhibit in the future, and how the dynamics of their interaction will ultimately promote or undermine romantic attraction and long-term relationship well-being.As such, it is unlikely that any matching algorithm that seeks to match two people based on information available before they are aware of each other can account for more than a very small proportion of the variance in long-term romantic outcomes, such as relationship satisfaction and stability. In short, online dating has radically altered the dating landscape since its inception 15 to 20 years ago. Some of the changes have improved romantic outcomes, but many have not.We conclude by (a) discussing the implications of online dating for how people think about romantic relationships and for homogamy (similarity of partners) in marriage and (b) offering recommendations for policymakers and for singles seeking to make the most out of their online dating endeavors.
3 I lost quite a bit of weight last year. I'm well aware that I am likely to fail if I'm not diligent. I've been at my goal weight for about three months now and find I must constantly monitor and count Calories and exercise. It is more difficult than losing weight so far. I can see why most people fail - in fact studies that look at people with long term success (only one to two percent of dieters keep at their goal weight for more than five years) note that daily diligence is the only method that seems to work. An excellent reason for never gaining weight in the first place.
4 This will be the subject of several future posts - the often clueless reliance on having lots of data can be a trap. It is like the kid who doesn't know how to work the problem on the test and puts down the wrong answer to nine significant decimal places because he used the wrong model and blindly plugged input into his calculator trusting that a result was a solid answer. I can't tell you how often I've seen this in organizations that should know better.
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