Friday, December 14, 2012

Refuting Ken Balsely’s bogus claim that public speaking is everybody’s number one fear











Yesterday, over in Washington state, Ken Balsely blogged at Ken’s Corner & The Real News about how Public speaking is not an art.  He made some good points, that you should both know your material and your audience. Ken never got around to explicitly saying that public speaking is a craft. But, he included the totally bogus claim that it’s everyone’s number one fear:

“And yet, survey after survey, study after study has found that public speaking is the number one fear among all people. Fear of speaking in public outweighs a visit to the IRS, a trip to the dentist or a day at your mother-in-law. Everyone’s number one fear is speaking in public.”

That’s not real news, it’s real crap. The About page for his blog says:

“I have not allowed space for you to respond to the articles or to make your own comments. If you want to do that – - start your own web page.”

On October 23rd I blogged about how when you look at surveys of if more people fear or people fear more, you will find that Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not out greatest fear. A week later I blogged about another more people fear survey by Accountemps. So, for the first type, public speaking came in number one in only six of twenty surveys.

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