2 ms·

There are a lot of myths and anecdata about lefties having shorter life expectancy. That might indicate health consequences in some way.

• eftpotrm 2y ago
  IIRC the major factor in that was found to be that left-handed people within the age ranges where significant numbers of them are dying of natural causes had usually been brought up to suppress left-handedness, so are reporting as right-handed and skewing the data.
  • robertlagrant 2y ago
    But why would that mean that the people who didn't suppress died so much younger?
    • verteu 2y ago
      > [A]ccording Chris McManus, the researchers made a "very subtle error"... > Halpern and Coren took a list of the people who had recently died and contacted their families, asking whether or not their relative had been right- or left-handed. > Looking at 2,000 cases, they saw that the average age at death of the left-handers was about nine years younger than of the right-handers. > On that basis, they concluded that left-handers died earlier. > At first glance, that seems persuasive. What did the researchers do wrong? > "Their mistake was that they only looked at the dead," Chris McManus explains. > The point is that left-handers are more common now than they used to be, so - at least at the time the research was published - left-handers were on average younger than right-handers. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352
• ensocode 2y ago
  Could also be due to right-handed tools. Chainsaws...