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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 us
by 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 agoBut 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