The Left Handed Myth

I stumbled on an old myth that annoys me, so brought this blog out of storage to rant a little.

Studies have been done which show that the number of left handers drops severely with age. This is presumed to indicate that left handers have a notably shorter lifespan than right handers.

This is an interesting theory, except that it is incorrect. Back in the olden days, lefty schoolchildren were forced to switch to being righties. Senior lefties who were subject to this, learned to write with their right hand, and thus closeted, would be counted as righties. After school policies became more civilized, younger lefties were never forced to switch, and would be counted as lefties. Because senior lefties appeared to be righties, the number of young lefties to old lefties would seem to drop severely.

Thankfully this drop is caused by the statistical error described above, not the grave.

Two final thoughts, there's a hilarious Dave Barry article that made me nearly hurt myself laughing here, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-07-14/features/9103190719_1_right-handed-people-lefties-desks and second, I've noticed that a surprising percentage of contractors are left handed. I don't know quite what to make of that, but find it interesting.