Left-handed people are not geniuses according to new research

LEFT-handed people are less likely to be gifted, a professor claims. Dispelling the myth that lefties are cleverer and better at sport, prof Mike Nicholls says his research reveals pupils trail behind right-handed classmates.

And he reckons his findings are backed up by other surveys in Britain and the US. Prof Nicholls, from Flinders University in Adelaide, analysed 5,000 children aged five, 10% of them lefties.

He examined their performance at school and heard feedback from school teachers. He concluded: “Left-handers tend to do worse as a group than right-handers.”

The psychologist – a left-hander himself – also said it was untrue to say being left-handed was a result of "something going awry at birth". However, the reduced learning ability of lefties was similar to the "negative outcomes" of being born prematurely, he claimed.

"The amount of deficit we are observing as the result of being left-handed is around about the same magnitude as being born pre-term. It’s a small, but nevertheless significant, negative result that we’re observing," he explained. But international left-handed groups scoffed at his claims. They point out four of the five original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed, as was an Apollo astronaut.

And Barack Obama has managed to rise to his position as leader of the free world despite also being a southpaw. However, our bungling Prime Minister David Cameron is left-handed… so perhaps the professor has a point after all.


/Mirror.co.uk/