The Left-Handed Advantage

Then again, as many lefties might point out, being left-handed can also offer intellectual prowess. Tests conducted by Alan Searleman from St Lawrence University in New York found there were more left-handed people with IQs over 140 than right-handed people. Famous left-handed thinkers in history from Albert Einstein to Isaac Newton to Benjamin Franklin seem to underline the point.

As Hopkins says, it may be that left-handed people occupy the extremes when it comes to health and ability.

"The anomaly is left-handed people make up the extremely gifted and the extremely compromised," said Hopkins. "The rest of us make up the middle ground."