And in fact, I seem to recall OkCupid doing another informal study a couple of years ago on which profile pictures were the best at getting replies and messages; and finding out that these were not the ones which explicitly showed the person's face and physique, but the ones which showed the person engaged in a cool activity (skiing, bunjee jumping, swimming etc)
The recent OKCupid blog, which gwern mentioned in Media Open Thread, investigated the impact of three different factors on users' perceptions of each other: authority (reported match %), profile text (present or absent), and looks.
On the bright side, the authority versus reality match-up came out tied:
If you don't consider that a good outcome, you're not yet sufficiently cynical.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are a thousand words worth?
... Approximately nothing.
And the winner is...