Washington, Oct. 25 (ANI): A CNN story that claimed that women's votes are influenced by their menstrual cycles, has sparked outrage amongst the gender worldwide, and has also triggered an avalanche of criticism on the Internet.
Based on unpublished research, the news piece stated that a woman's voting behaviour was affected by whether she was ovulating on election day.
"New research suggest that hormones may influence female voting choices differently depending on whether a woman is single or in a committed relationship," The Age quoted the article, as tweeted by @KailiJoy, as reading.
"The researchers found that during the fertile time of the month, when levels of the hormone estrogen are high, single women appeared more likely to vote for Obama and committed women appeared more likely to vote for Romney," it added.
According to the paper, while MSNBC's Jamil Smith commented via Twitter that "CNN should be embarrassed for even asking whether hormones drive women's votes, much less publishing a post about it", New York Magazine's Kat Stoeffel was sardonic: "Female voters! Kindly tell Nate Silver the date of your last period and your relationship status so he can figure out once and for all who's gonna win this thing November 6.
Many media outlets also criticized the publishing by CNN. Huffington Post's headline was typical of the viral reaction: "CNN Reports That Women Voters Are Apparently Incapable Of Cognition, According To LOL Science", the paper said.
A newly set up Twitter account @hormonalvotes taunted the CNN story saying, "If the @CNN hormones story is true, they will have to rename 'swing states' to 'mood swing states'."
However, CNN writer Elizabeth Landau, responsible for the story, who received a torrent of criticism following its publication and subsequent removal, defended her position: "For the record, I was reporting on a study to be published in a peer-reviewed journal and included skepticism. I did not conduct the study." (ANI)