I heard it from a communications professor, so it must be true

In March there was a series of TEDx talks given at the California Polytechnic University in Pomona. Videos from them were posted on YouTube. One was Why Do We Fear Public Speaking? by Professor Dave Guin. At 2:36 in the video he proclaimed:

“Fear of public speaking is ubiquitous. Every person in this room has a fear of public speaking.”

Based on two surveys of U.S. adults done last year that’s probably not true. On January 5th of this year I blogged about Is public speaking universally feared? Of course not! One, the Chapman Survey of American Fears, found that over a third (34.1%) were Not Afraid At All of public speaking. It was done at a university less than thirty miles from Pomona, so there is no excuse for Professor Guin not having heard about it. The other YouGov survey found that almost a quarter (23%) were Not Afraid At All of public speaking.