More dopey science
There is a lot of interesting and funky research on left-handedness. This Reuters piece describes some that, by contrast, just seems dopey:
Left-handed women may have a shorter life-span
Among 12,178 middle-aged Dutch women the researchers followed for nearly 13 years, 252 died. When left-handed women were compared with the other women, and the data were adjusted for a number of potentially confounding factors, lefties had a 40 percent higher risk of dying from any cause, a 70 percent higher risk of dying from cancer, and a 30 percent higher risk of dying from diseases of the circulatory system. Left-handed women also had a 2-fold increased risk of dying from breast cancer, close to a 5-fold increased risk of dying from colorectal cancer, and more than a 3-fold higher risk of cerebrovascular mortality.
There are big problems with this “research”. 252 women out of 12,178 died over a 13 year period. That’s 19 per year or a 0.0016 annual mortality rate — quite a small number for drawing any conclusions. But that’s not the worst of it. Women have a left-handedness rate of about 9% or so. The study claims that women have a 40% higher chance of dying — that would equate to about 12% of the 252 women who died being left-handed. That’s 30 dead left handed women over a 13 year period, or just 2 left-handed women in the study dying per year.
Drawing any conclusions from the “study” is ludicrous. However, it was more ludicrous to have paid for the study.