Lefty Stir Is Right Down Her Alley : Science: Cal State San Bernardino psychologist’s study of the perils of left-handedness has startled her colleagues and the public.

Nestled beneath the San Bernardino Mountains, the sleepy California State University campus here baked in the unexpected spring warmth Thursday.

But no place on campus was as hot as a small, drab office in the Physical Sciences Building where psychologist Diane F. Halpern has been fending off phone calls, reporters and television crews for the past three days.

Halpern and fellow psychologist Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia startled and alarmed the psychological community--and much of the public as well--with a report in the New England Journal of Medicine this week claiming that left-handers die, on average, about nine years earlier than right-handers.

The report has met with near-universal disbelief from her research colleagues, but Halpern stood firm in her convictions.

“All I can say is we were extremely careful in collecting the data,” she said rather wistfully. “I am not a wild and crazy person.”

Halpern and Coren surveyed the families of nearly 3,000 people who died in San Bernardino and Riverside counties in late 1988 and early 1989 and collected information on the handedness of the deceased. They found that left-handers died at an average age of 66, while right-handers on average died at 77.

They attributed most of the difference to the fact that left-handers were 5.7 times aslikely as right-handers to die in an accident and 4.0 times as likely to die in an automobile accident.

Their report has stirred concern because of both the unexpectedly large difference in expected life spans and the possibility that left-handers might be stigmatized as a result of the discovery.

“It’s hard to believe,” said UCLA neuropsychologist Paul Satz. “There’s very little evidence in clinical medicine where something leads to such a big difference in longevity. It’s staggering to think of a certain trait that would lead to such premature mortality.”

Some critics speculated that life and automobile insurance rates might be increased for left-handers. Others feared that parents might try to force naturally left-handed children into becoming right-handers--a practice that was common early in this century and that frequently triggered some unwanted behavior changes, along with awkwardness.

But, said Halpern, “we know that people with white skin have more skin cancers. We don’t call white skin a health risk, so why should we do it for left-handedness?” She also noted that U.S. courts have forbidden insurance companies to charge higher rates to men than to women, even though the average male life span is six years shorter. “So why would they be allowed to do it for left-handers?” she asked.

The center of the controversy is the 43-year-old psychologist who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. She has been at Cal State San Bernardino for nine years. Her earlier studies involved the differences in intelligence and mental abilities between men and women, a highly charged subject that has stirred fractious debate but in which she was largely on the periphery.

While preparing a book on sex differences and abilities, she concluded that she needed to know more about the role of right- and left-handedness in those differences. She spent a sabbatical year in Vancouver with Coren, who had been researching the subject for 20 years and is a leading authority.

They decided to do the study, she said, “when we were just sitting around one Saturday afternoon and said, ‘I wonder if . . . ‘ “ Neither is left-handed, though Coren has a left-handed son and Halpern’s husband is a mixed-hander. “We all have someone close to us who is left-handed,” she noted.

Halpern said there are two types of left-handers. The bulk of them are genetic left-handers and, Satz said, “many surveys show that there is no evidence that they are at increased risk of intellectual, cognitive, reading or achievement abilities . . . even though a number of investigators are inclined to say there is.”

In fact, some surveys of gifted children have found an above-normal incidence of left-handedness, and many of our culture’s artistic and intellectual icons--including Leonardo da Vinci, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix--have been left-handed.

But a second category of left-handedness is associated with birth trauma, such as prematurity, low birth weight and breech birth, and these individuals do exhibit a high incidence of neurological and physical problems.

Interestingly, the two categories can usually be differentiated by foot size. In genetic left-handers, as in the population at large, both feet are the same size. But if left-handedness results from birth trauma, the right foot is typically about one-quarter shoe size smaller.

But why an individual is left-handed is really inconsequential, Halpern argued, because most of the premature mortality results from the fact that “all power equipment, all motorized vehicles, all safety levers are designed for optimal use by right-handed people. This means that the left-hander either has to use her or his non-preferred hand in operating it or has to reach across the body or assume an awkward position.”

Although Halpern staunchly defends her and Coren’s work, she noted that the increased mortality was much larger than even they had expected--”I would have thought about two years,” she said--and she admits to a certain amount of unease. “I’ll feel better when this is replicated, obviously,” she noted.

Despite the distraction of having to field so many phone calls and interviews, Halpern admitted that she found some of the attention pleasant. Finishing a call from National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” she noted, “That’s one of my favorite shows.”

Meanwhile, Halpern and other experts strongly recommended against parents trying to change the handedness of their children in an effort to make them better able to cope with the right-handed world.

That would be a “sad mistake,” she said. “What you’ll end up with is an unhappy child with sloppy handwriting. This is not a matter of one being better than the other, but of appreciating human differences.”