To All My Lefties Out There
There’s always been something sinister about being left-handed. But shorter life spans? That’s downright creepy. The notion apparently sprang from a Canadian psychologist named Stanley Coren, who declared in his 1992 book, The Left-Handed Syndrome, that left-handers, on average, lived about a decade less than right-handers do.
For the previous decade, Coren and others who study “handedness” in the population (90 percent are right-handed, with twice as many lefties among men than women) had amassed data that seemed to show that as the population aged, the percentage of lefties kept decreasing.
What could be killing off the lefties so virulently? Lots of hypotheses arose. The dangers of operating machines and equipment designed for right handers. A developmental or pathological irregularity. A greater desire to take risks. Nobody knew.
Until 1993. In that year scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University co-authored a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. They examined the death reports of nearly 4,000 Bostonians over the age of 65. Critically, each report contained accurate information about hand dominance, gathered for a separate study. The result? Over six years, the death rate for righties was 32.2 percent, for lefties 33.8 percent, a statistically insignificant difference.
Dr. Marcel Salive, one of the co-authors, said he thought data from previous studies had been misinterpreted. “As a consequence of that interpretation,” he told The New York Times, “a lot of people had unwarranted fears.”
So take heart, lefties. Even though the misinformation persists, you weren’t handed a mortal curse at birth.
By Scott McCredie for MSN Health & Fitness
For the previous decade, Coren and others who study “handedness” in the population (90 percent are right-handed, with twice as many lefties among men than women) had amassed data that seemed to show that as the population aged, the percentage of lefties kept decreasing.
What could be killing off the lefties so virulently? Lots of hypotheses arose. The dangers of operating machines and equipment designed for right handers. A developmental or pathological irregularity. A greater desire to take risks. Nobody knew.
Until 1993. In that year scientists at the National Institutes of Health and Harvard University co-authored a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. They examined the death reports of nearly 4,000 Bostonians over the age of 65. Critically, each report contained accurate information about hand dominance, gathered for a separate study. The result? Over six years, the death rate for righties was 32.2 percent, for lefties 33.8 percent, a statistically insignificant difference.
Dr. Marcel Salive, one of the co-authors, said he thought data from previous studies had been misinterpreted. “As a consequence of that interpretation,” he told The New York Times, “a lot of people had unwarranted fears.”
So take heart, lefties. Even though the misinformation persists, you weren’t handed a mortal curse at birth.
By Scott McCredie for MSN Health & Fitness