INVERSE.COM - Mar 7 - Pheramor, a new dating app, is promising to find its members a perfect match, using a cheek swab of their DNA and a lot of their data. The app launched in Houston at the end of February. After signing up at $10 a month, users mail in a $16 cheek swab kit. Pheramor says it then sequences 11 genes related to attraction in order to help pair them with their best match. Theres just one problem: Human pheromones have never been proven to attract us to each other. In fact, they might not even exist. Scientists have actually been arguing over the legitimacy of pheromones for decades. A study published as recently as 2017 in Royal Society Open Science found that participants exposed to steroids containing what's generally believed to be a human pheromone experienced zero increased levels of attraction. Pheramor's founder Asma Mirza argues: "People hear the word pheromones and they think that that's what we're doing, but that’s not what we're doing.” Rather, Mirza says Pheramor pairs users with others whose genes are different from their own. A few studies have shown that, when it comes to attraction, humans appear to naturally gravitate toward those with a small set of genes that vary from their own. The thinking is that we are more drawn to people who we are less related to because of our deep-seated distaste for incest. The app also gathers more information the more users use it.
by Grace Lisa Scott
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