Spouting nonsense: a fake statistic in an article on how public speaking is related to leadership

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Dane Cobain at Speakerhub on May 30, 2022 titled How public speaking is related to leadership. It has nine paragraphs titled:

 

Leaders need to:

Challenge the status quo

Bring people together

Overcome their fear

Lead from the heart

Tap into emotional intelligence

Accurately convey information

Address people’s needs

Always be prepared to answer questions

Continuously learn

 

His third paragraph on how Leaders need to overcome their fears begins by claiming that:

 

“Public speaking is the world’s most common phobia, ahead of fears such as death, spiders and heights.”

 

That statement violates his sixth paragraph, titled Leaders need to accurately convey information. The first clause in Dane’s third paragraph links to another article at the National Social Anxiety Center which is titled Public Speaking Anxiety. That article contains a fake statistic. It claims that:

 

“The fear of public speaking is the most common phobia ahead of death, spiders, or heights. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that public speaking anxiety, or glossophobia, affects about 73% of the population.”

 

That is rubbish, which I blogged about on March 22, 2019 in a post titled An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support. The 73% just is crap from Statistic Brain. So, Dane is awarded a Spoutly for spouting nonsense.

 

Could his article have been better another way? On January 28, 2017 I blogged about How many items should be on a list of tips or top tips? He could have added a tenth paragraph, and changed the title to the Top Ten ways public speaking is related to leadership.