impute.me may provide the consumer polygenic score service Scott Alexander predicted, but it has made no public waves.

This is a hedged claim with two parts: impute.me plausibly offered consumer polygenic scores from uploaded genetic data (the service he had predicted), and as of February 2023 it had received little or no mainstream attention or uptake. True if impute.me did offer consumer polygenic score reports and had little media coverage or public prominence. Mostly true if it offered such scores and its attention was small but not zero (some niche coverage). Mixed if only one part holds. Mostly false if impute.me did not really offer the predicted service, or had received notable mainstream coverage, but the claim rests on something true. False if impute.me offered nothing like the service and was also widely covered.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Impute.me Wikipedia · 7 September 2019

   “web application that allowed members of the public to use their data from direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests (including tests from 23andMe and Ancestry.com) to calculate polygenic risk scores (PRS) for complex diseases and cognitive and personality traits.”

2. E2 Impute.me Wikipedia · 7 September 2019

   “In July 2022, Lasse Folkerson, initiator and operator of impute.me, took the website offline.”

3. E3 From a Fledgling Genetic Science, A Murky Market for Prediction Undark · 27 October 2023

   “During evenings, he ran a website called Impute.me, where users could upload their raw genetic data from companies such as 23andMe or Ancestry and receive polygenic scores for any of hundreds of traits, calculated based on publicly available data from published genome-wide association studies.”

4. E4 Impute.me Review: Advanced Analysis Of Your DNA? SelfDecode · 3 August 2021

   “There are not many Impute.me reviews available online.”

E1 and E3 show that impute.me let the public upload raw data from 23andMe or Ancestry and get polygenic scores for hundreds of traits, so the first part holds. On attention, E4 (2021) says few reviews of the service existed online, which fits low prominence. Its attention was still not zero: it had a Wikipedia article (E1), and E3 is coverage from after the claim date. E2 also shows the site went offline in July 2022, so by February 2023 it no longer offered the service, though the hedged claim still describes it fairly. Because attention was small but not zero, the claim is mostly true.