The modern matchmakers Những bà mối hiện đại
Internet dating sites claim to have brought science to the age-old question of how to pair off successfully. But have they?
Các trang webs hẹn hò trực tuyến lớn tiếng tuyên bố là đã mang lại một cách tiếp cận có tính khoa học để giải quyết một vấn đề muôn thuở : xe duyên đôi lứa . Nhưng phải chăng đó là một thành công?

Feb 11th 2012 | from the Economist print edition

Part 1:

FOR as long as humans have romanced each other, others have wanted to meddle. Whether those others were parents, priests, friends or bureaucrats, their motive was largely the same: they thought they knew what it took to pair people off better than those people knew themselves.
Today, though, there is a new matchmaker in the village: the internet. It differs from the old ones in two ways. First, its motive is purely profit. Second, single wannabe lovers are queuing up to use it, rather than resenting its nagging. For internet dating sites promise two things that neither traditional matchmakers nor chance encounters at bars, bus-stops and bar mitzvahs offer. One is a vastly greater choice of potential partners. The other is a scientifically proven way of matching suitable people together, enhancing the chance of “happily ever after”.
The greater choice is unarguable. But does it lead to better outcomes? And do the “scientifically tested algorithms” actually work, and deliver the goods in ways that traditional courtship (or, at least, flirtation) cannot manage? These are the questions asked by a team of psychologists led by Eli Finkel of Northwestern University, in Illinois, in a paper released—probably not coincidentally—a few days before St Valentine’s day. This paper, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, reviews studies carried out by many groups of psychologists since the earliest internet dating site, Match.com, opened for business in 1995. In it, Dr Finkel and his colleagues cast a sceptical eye over the whole multi-billion-dollar online dating industry, and they are deeply unconvinced.
Blueprint for a perfect partner? Bí quyết để có 1 người bạn tình hoàn hảo
The researchers’ first observation is not so much what the studies they examined have shown, but what they have been unable to show, namely how any of the much-vaunted partner-matching algorithms actually work.
Commercially, that is fair enough. Many firms preserve their intellectual property as trade secrets, rather than making it public by patenting it, and there is no reason why internet dating sites should not be among them. But this makes claims of efficacy impossible to test objectively. There is thus no independent scientific evidence that any internet dating site’s algorithm for matching people together actually does enhance the chance of their hitting it off when they meet. What papers have been published on the matter have been written by company insiders who do not reveal how the crucial computer programs do their stuff.
It is, though, possible to test the value of a claim often made for these algorithms: that they match people with compatible personality traits. No doubt they do, given the number of questions on such matters on the average application form. What is assumed, but not tested, however, is that this is a good thing—that those with compatible personalities make more successful couples than those without. To examine this proposition, Dr Finkel draws on a study published in 2010 by Portia Dyrenforth of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, New York.
Dr Dyrenforth asked more than 20,000 people about their relationships, and also assessed their personalities. Members of couples with similar personalities were indeed happier than those whose partners were dissimilar.

Vocabulary in focus
Một số từ, cụm từ lưu ý ở part 1:
to romance - tán tỉnh ( từ điển thường không có từ này, đây là giải nghĩa của đại từ điển Oxford)
to meddle
bureaucrat
to pair sb off
single wannabe lovers - người độc thân muốn yêu ( ^,^ )
nagging
chance encounter at
bar mitzvahs - lễ trở thành người lớn
courtship
carry out sb of sth
cast a sceptical eye over sb/ on sth : cái nhìn đầy hoài nghi
much-vaunted : quảng cáo ầm ĩ, rầm rộ
intellectual property
test objectively
efficacy
to hit it off : làm ổn thoả, tốt đẹp
compatible personalty trait
compatible partner
clause + than those without
assesse personalities

hi cả nhà, cho mình hỏi câu: "it's never so close" nghĩa là gì nhỉ?
cám ơn cả nhà