We're not sure what made a group of Israeli scientists want so ravenously to find out if the smell of human tears could affect the angle of a dude's boner, but now we have the answer — thanks to a core group of six women who could pump out a full milliliter of emotional liquids per day.

And don't forget the men who agreed to sniff those emotional liquids, trying their hardest to think sexy thoughts while a group of ravenous Israeli scientists hovered closely behind them.

The results are about as shocking as that “people who watch Fox News are dumb!” revelation last month. The latest in expensive science proving obvious things: This Weizmann Institute of Science study finds a weepy woman does not a horny man make.

Or, in lab-speak:

“We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion-related odorless tears obtained from women donors, induced reductions in sexual appeal attributed by men to pictures of women's faces. Moreover, after sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that sniffing women's tears selectively reduced activity in brain-substrates of sexual arousal in men.”

Experts are guessing it's some kind of defense mechanism for females who are really, really not in the mood — to the point of tears. We're glad to know we have another method of defense to add to our limited knowledge of karate in the case of rape, but are also kind of embarrassed to learn that our Hollywood fantasy of deep, emotional mattress-bonding has been totally killing the mood this whole time.

According to the Washington Post, head researcher Noam Sobel chose the Emo Six from a pool of 60 women and one man who volunteered to participate in the study. From the Post:

“We reached this core group of six women criers who could come back to the lab every other day and cry a full milliliter,” Sobel said.

Each woman chose a movie to elicit crying, watching it in private and collecting her own tears. By far the most successful tear-inducer was the dying scene in “The Champ,” a 1979 film starring Jon Voight about an over-the-hill boxer making a comeback in order to provide a better future for his son, whom he is raising on his own.

(Other winners: “Life Is Beautiful,” “Terms of Endearment,” “When a Man Loves a Woman” and the Israeli “Broken Wings.” Officially to be removed from all lists of appropriate date movies, if either party is hoping to get lucky. And like it.)

Shockingly, the scientists are having a harder time recruiting guys who can muscle out a milliliter a day. But, for the sake of political correctness, they're trying, and have two locked down already. This time, the fairer sex will get to watch arousing films/look at photos of hot people and sniff cotton wads full of tear-stuffs. If only Elizabeth Cady Stanton could see us now.

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