Photo by Tracy Clayton.

For some reason, the Washington Post is lending a ton of space today to a celebration of the fifth anniversary of its Date Lab feature — a constant source of entertainment for us DCist editors in which the paper fixes people up with one another and documents their dates. (Journalism!) But based on the results, if Date Lab was a real dating service, they’d probably be have to declare bankruptcy.

Perusing the Post’s follow-up on “some of [Date Lab’s] memorable couples,” there are some that never connected for a second date, a couple which broke up after five months, a relationship that “kind of fizzled away,” a match that soon “lost interest,” a duo that had the Jerry Seinfeld problem, a couple that didn’t make it to the third date after the guy had “stuff going on in [his] life,” one experience that drove one of the participants back to online dating, one instance where the guy just “disappeared,” a pair whose profile led people to believe they were “totally racist,” and other matches featuring people who otherwise had no business dabbling in the dangerous business of romance.

On the bright side, there was one episode of the series in which the man involved found himself the object of online affection from several 40-year-old women after the Post ran the story. So, there’s that.

In short: of the over 250 matches, the dozen or so most memorable netted, uh, zero long-term relationships and one cougar magnet.

That’s some bad science, Date Lab.