Popa_bar_abba,
For whatever it’s worth, you have my complete approval and support for every (well-written) word of your post opening this thread.
I’m afraid this will degenerate into the usual shidduch thread nonsense. But your post still stands.
It’s also not clear to me why R’ Rechnitz, who is so generous and has so many resources available to him, has not invested in producing (as you already mentioned) some real hard data in the form of a reliable analysis of the numbers and other factors involved here.
There have been scientific studies conducted on other subjects (including, but not limited to, finding a cure for diseases with drugs and other treatments) where the results were surprising and led to unexpected breakthroughs. Solutions to the problem studied sometimes resulted from treatment following an altogether different direction than expected.
It seems quite obvious that our Roshei Yeshiva don’t all approve of changing the way their Talmidim approach shidduchim.
The subject definitely requires further study.