Worst public speaking advice ever (The Lancet, 1939)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagining your audience naked (or in their underwear) is one piece of bad advice. But I just saw what may be the worst advice ever. In The Lancet there was a three-page article by E. N. Snowden on January 14, 1939 in the Notes Comments, and Abstracts section (pages 124 to 127) titled Self-Consciousness and Public Speaking. Then on February 11, 1939 (page 355) there was a comment on it by Claude Lillington (from the League of Red Cross Societies in Paris) as follows:

 

“Sir: The correspondence on this subject inspires me to remind your readers of an old tip for nervous, self-conscious public speakers. So simple. Just before you are due to speak, you touch the tip of your tongue with the glowing end of your cigarette. The reaction short-circuits the inhibitory impulses responsible for stammering and allied phenomena of a distressing character. And if you, an Englishman, are speaking in French, the burn may also give a lisping quality to your speech, infusing into it a note which your compatriots, if not your hosts, may interpret as Gallic.”

   

The cartoon man sticking out his tongue and cigarette both were adapted from images at Wikimedia Commons.

 

What is a fairy tale and what is real?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on May 6, 2020 at the Gem State Patriot News Dr. John Livingston had blogged about  What IS Real? Media Madness. On July 23, 2021 he recycled that title with another post on What is Real? John says you should begin to assess data by considering the messenger, and then assess the message. Based on that criterion he flunks miserably. The worst part of a paragraph is his current post says:

 

“…. I supported and still support Dr. Hahn’s role in advising our Governor, but people like Dr. Ryan Cole who had impeccable academic credentials should have received wider coverage. Nationally people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Marty Makaray, Dr. Scott Atlas, and the signers of The Greater Barrington Project should have been front and center in the media coverage precisely because they were offering non-conventual contra opinions.”

 

First, let’s look at Dr. Ryan Cole’s lack of credibility. At KTVB7 on April 2, 2021 there is an article by Brian Holmes titled St. Luke’s chief medical officer fact checks a doctor’s anti-vax claims. Another article by Saranac Hale Spencer at FactCheck dot org on April 19, 2021 is titled Idaho doctor makes baseless claims about safety of Covid-19 vaccines.

 

Second, let’s look at Dr. Marty Makaray. Oops – Dr. John Livingston instead meant to refer to surgeon Marty Makary.

 

Third, let’s look at the Greater Barrington Project. Oops again! When you Google it nothing comes up since it really is the Great Barrington Declaration. That document is discussed by David Gorski in a long article at Science-Based Medicine on December 28, 2020 titled 2020 and the pandemic: A year of (some) physicians behaving badly:

 

“Perhaps the most despicable propaganda being promoted by some physicians is that, because COVID-19 is known to be much more lethal in older people and people with comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes, we should simply, in essence, let the virus rip through the ‘young, healthy population’ and used ‘focused protection’ to keep it from killing the elderly in nursing homes. Yes, I’m referring to the Great Barrington Declaration, a document produced by an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a Stanford physician basically advocates doing just that, never mind that it’s impossible to achieve herd immunity without a vaccine, unless you are willing to accept millions of deaths, and then it’s debatable whether it’s possible at all. Basically, the Great Barrington Declaration is a eugenics declaration, the denials of its authors notwithstanding, and a physician was one of the three authors who collaborated with the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a right wing think tank advocating ‘opening up’ the economy. Even more sadly, although it is true that there were a lot of fake signatories to the declaration, spoofs done to demonstrate how lax the website’s procedure for signature verification was, it is also true that a lot of apparently real physicians did sign it.”

 

An article by Kate Ng at the Independent on October 9, 2020 is titled Coronavirus: ‘Dr Person Fakename’ and ‘Harold Shipman’ signatures on scientists’ letter calling on government to embrace herd immunity and also subtitled Other names in list of Great Barrington Declaration include ‘Dr Johnny Fartpants’ and ‘Professor Notaf Uckingclue’

 

Fourth, let’s look at Dr. Scott Atlas. He also is discussed by David Gorski in that long article at Science-Based Medicine:

 

“Arguably the absolute worst example of a physician behaving badly during a pandemic is Dr. Scott Atlas, who rose to prominence advising President Trump on his coronavirus response during the summer. Atlas is a neuroradiologist and, so it seems, a formerly well-respected one, having served as the chief of the neuroradiology section at Stanford University. Unfortunately, later he became a political hack working for the Hoover Institution at Stanford, a conservative think tank that’s been a font of bad takes on COVID-19. The reason Dr. Atlas so quickly gained Trump’s ear even though he had no relevant expertise in infectious disease, epidemiology, or public health, of course, is because told Trump what he wanted to hear, that COVID-19 was not deadly, that we could achieve herd immunity, and that the cost of the ‘lockdowns’ was far worse than the ‘disease’ of COVID-19 being addressed.

 

…. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Atlas was entirely on board with the Great Barrington Declaration, and, as a result, in October the Trump administration was seriously considering a herd immunity-based strategy before there was a vaccine. Truly, when the history of the pandemic is finally written with the perspective of a decade or two from now, Dr. Atlas will likely end up being one of the worst of the worst in terms of physicians promoting misinformation, largely because of his outsized influence in the Trump administration before he finally - and mercifully - resigned a few weeks ago, when it finally became absolutely clear that Trump’s legal challenges of the election results would fail and that there would be no second Trump administration, at least not in 2021.”

 

And fifth, Dr. Livingston meant to write nonconventional but instead wrote non-conventual. The definition for conventual in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is:

 

“of, relating to, or befitting a convent or monastic life.”

 

Back on September 11, 2020 I blogged about Editing tips for speechwriters and other writers. In that post I mentioned Dr. Livingston misspelling flu as flue, which he again did in his current article.  

 

The image was photoshopped from a 1922 book cover for Elizabeth Rhodes Jackson  at Wikimedia Commons.

 

After over a century, the Cleveland Indians are changing their name to the Guardians

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball (and other pro sports) teams commonly are named after fierce animals, or groups of people. I grew up in Pittsburgh, which has the Pirates. Boston had the Braves, who kept that name even after moving first to Milwaukee and then to Atlanta. Cleveland named the Indians as a reaction to the Braves, as was discussed by Tyler Carey at WKYC on July 4, 2021 in an article titled Before becoming the ‘Guardians,’ how did Cleveland’s baseball team end up with the name ‘Indians’? It’s more complicated than you think.

 

Another article by Graison Dangor at Forbes on July 23, 2021 titled Cleveland’s baseball team switches name to ‘Guardians’ after calls to drop ‘Indians’ moniker mentioned one clueless reaction from out of town:

 

“Former President Donald Trump released a statement calling the name change ‘a disgrace’ and claimed that ‘the people who are most angry about it are the many Indians of our Country’ - even though American Indian groups lead protests against the team’s name and logo for nearly a half century.”

 

The Indians uniforms came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Shining a sun on the Idaho Freedom Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people can dish it out, but can’t take it. At the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) on July 12, 2021 there is an article by their loudmouthed president, Wayne Hoffman, titled Idaho Capital Sun Newest Progressive Propaganda Factory. He whined about that effective, new, little online newspaper, whose content is being reprinted:

 

“I spent close to 20 years in journalism, and I remember when the press was content to let their editorial boards and columnists lean left. Now, entire newsrooms are being built to generate stories designed to shift public opinion in that specific direction. Back in my day, we called this agenda-setting journalism, which was considered unethical. It was also unethical to reprint third-party news content out of concern that someone else was shaping news coverage. Today, the need to make America more socialist and drown out conservative ideas outweighs the call to produce unbiased journalism.“

 

But apparently, it is not unethical to reprint conservative third-party news content. That is just what the Gem State Patriot News did on July 16 when it reprinted Wayne’s article with the same title.

 

Which articles in the Sun did he object to? He didn’t name them by title (or link to them), but clearly one article is by Clark Corbin and Audrey Dutton on July 7, 2021 titled Multiple complaints accuse Idaho Freedom Foundation of breaking nonprofit rules and a second earlier article by Clark Corbin on June 11, 2021 is titled Extremism expert: Idaho critical race theory debate is ‘cynical’ effort to rally voters.

 

He also does not mention it, but also was obviously upset the Sun caught that his vice president, Dustin Hurst, got fined $250 for incompetent behavior. On July 1, 2021 Audrey Dutton has an article in the Idaho Capital Sun titled Idaho Freedom Foundation official fined for breaking lobbyist registration law.

 

Yesterday’s superficial advice about fear of public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The July 2021 Toastmaster magazine has an article by Craig Harrison titled Due Your Due Diligence on pages 22 to 25. He says to avoid intellectual complacency and that:

 

“Professional speakers who fact-check know from experience to seek the original source of facts and stats.”

 

There is an excellent example yesterday of how silly you can look by not following Craig’s advice. It is in an article by Jacob Highley at the Inquisitr titled How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking. His third paragraph says:

 

“According to studies, the fear of public speaking does more than impact how you interact with the world, your co-workers, or how you view yourself. The data indicates it affects your career too!”

 

But Jacob links to another article by Peter Khoury at Magnetic Speaking on December 13, 2016 titled 7 Unbelievable “Fear of Public Speaking” Statistics. The ‘statistics’ Peter cites really are about social anxiety disorder, which is not the same as fear of public speaking. On December 15, 2016 I blogged about them in a post titled Believable and unbelievable statistics about fears and phobias of public speaking.

 

And later in his article Jacob claims that:

 

“Only 7% of how a presentation is received revolves around the content presented. 55% of effective presentations are composed of non-verbal communication (like body language) and 38% of successful presentations are made up of your tone of voice.”  

 

He doesn’t say where those percentages came from, but they are mythical. I blogged about them way back on July 25, 2009 in a post titled Bullfighting the Mehrabian myth.

 

The image of a man shoveling dirt was adapted from this one at Openclipart.

 

Donald Trump should again tell people to get vaccinated for COVID

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The COVID-19 crisis isn’t over. On July 18, 2021 former president Donald Trump made another self-serving political statement:

 

 “Joe Biden kept talking about how good of a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or, quite simply, the Trump Administration. He's not doing well at all. He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth.”

 

If he instead was thinking about what would be good for the country (and showing real leadership), he would again have told supporters to get vaccinated. Today there also was an article by Chris Cillizza at CNN titled Donald Trump’s latest dangerous vaccine pronouncement with similar opinions.

 

An article by Kathy Frankovic at YouGov America on June 29, 2021 titled Boosting the COVID-19 vaccination rate: could Donald Trump make a difference? discussed results from their polls:

 

“One consistent finding of the Economist/YouGov polls is that those who reject the COVID-19 vaccine have more confidence and trust in medical advice from the former president (53%) than in the advice of current president Joe Biden (7%), his chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci (9%), or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (11%). A majority of vaccine rejectors trust President Trump’s advice, while majorities of them distrust the advice of others asked about in the poll.”

 

Back on March 17, 2021 there was an article by David Jackson at USA Today titled ‘It’s a great vaccine’: Donald trump recommends supporters get COVID-19 vaccine as polls show hesitancy.

 

The orange image was adapted from this one at Openclipart.

 

Heritage Interpretation - telling historical stories to people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia has a web page about Heritage interpretation. Back on December 19, 2010 I blogged about Heritage interpretation and public speaking. A blog post by Mark Woolman at Museums + Heritage on July 31, 2017 titled You’re a what? Interpreting Interpretation to Non-interpreters quotes Freeman Tilden’s definition for interpretation:

 

“An educational activity which aims to reveal meaning and relationships through the use of original objects, by first-hand experience, and by illustrative media, rather than simply to communicate factual information.”

 

As is shown above, historical signs are one type of illustrative media. You also can visit the Tabernacle (in Paris, Idaho) and get a narrated tour.  

 

At Saved by Nature on October 22, 2020 there is an article titled Freeman Tilden – the father of Heritage Interpretation: People of the Parks Past, Series #8.

 

Improperly plural names for single motor vehicles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today at a red light on the way home from the supermarket I got behind a Kia Spectra (as shown above). But spectra is the plural of spectrum, so that single vehicle really should be called a Spectrum. (Chevrolet and Geo earlier had a Spectrum).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nissan has a couple of plural names for SUVs. There is the Armada – but the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an armada as “a fleet of warships.” There also is the Kicks, which should be a Kick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chevrolet has a subcompact crossover SUV called the Trax, which is a misspelling for Tracks. Elsewhere it sometimes is known as a Tracker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Kia runs out of names, they might make a Recta (plural for rectum).  

 

Back on June 9, 2013 I blogged about Playing with words like kids and suggested that Toyota might call a mud-slinging SUV a Tergent - the opposite of a detergent.  

 

Images for the Spectra, Armada, Kicks, and Trax came from Wikimedia Commons. The Recta was adapted from a cartoon at OpenClipArt.   

 

Two Savage Chickens cartoons on how not to give feedback

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On June 28 and June 29 Doug Savage has a pair of his Savage Chickens cartoons, one titled How to Give Feedback 1-5 and a second titled How to Give Feedback 6-10. The first is shown above. Of course, for comic effect he instead shows what not to do. 

 

His chicken tactlessly uses the word idiot in all ten lessons. My favorite is Lesson #8 - Try the classic good-bad-good feedback sandwich:

“I like your hat. You’re a complete idiot, with impeccable taste in hats.”

 

Doug’s advice is quite standard. For example, the Toastmasters International publication titled Giving Effective Feedback (Item 317A in The Leadership Excellence Series) lists the first two as Be Specific and Use the “I” Technique.

 

Jargon in ads for jobs

 

Jargon should be avoided in speeches and in advertisements for jobs. At Canva.com there is an undated article titled The Jargon of Jobs that likely is from June 2021. I saw it referred to by Ellen Gutoskey at Mental Floss on June 9, 2021 in an article titled The most distinctive business jargon used in each state. It also was discussed by Tonje Odegard on June 22, 2021 in two articles at College Recruiter: one titled Part 1: How prevalent is jargon in graduate job adverts? and another titled Part 2: The problem with jargon in graduate job ads and why you should avoid using it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above bar chart shows the states where the most jargon was used in job ads. Washington (343) was first, California (339) was second, Colorado (321) was third, Utah (316) was fourth, and Idaho (302) was fifth, just above three-way tie (301) by Delaware, Massachusetts, and Oregon.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Canva article has a US map labeled with jargon for each state, which I have converted into the second bar chart shown above with abbreviations for all 50 states. Peel the Onion was the bizspeak phrase used by 8 states, Make Hay by 7 states; 4 states each used Action Oriented and Cloud First, 3 states each used Drill Down, Granulation, and Lased Focused. The most salacious term was Open the Kimono (used in both North Carolina and New Jersey).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third bar chart shows the most common terms in job ads for the US. Based on occurrence per thousand ads, the Top Five are Team Player (77), Dynamic (69), Self Starter (38), Empower (37), and Proactive (30).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fourth bar chart shows the most common terms in job ads for the UK. Based on occurrence per thousand ads, the Top Five are Team Player (147), Dynamic (134), Proactive (104), Proven Track Record (70), and Person Specification (56). There are large differences between the US and the UK.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fifth bar chart shows the Top Ten industries using jargon terms in the US. The top five are Information technology (604), Marketing (575), Finance and business (406), Human resources (299), and Media (240).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A sixth bar chart shows the Top Ten industries using jargon terms in the UK. The top five are Politics (908), Human resources (736), Real estate (626), Finance and business (562), and Information technology (359). There again are large differences between the US and the UK.

 

Another two ways to lose your credibility

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Bob and Tom syndicated morning comedy radio show on July 5, 2021 there was a discussion which mentioned another two ways to lose your credibility. The first was using a hot dog as a pointer. The second was wearing mittens - presumably oven mitts, also known as oven gloves. (Back on November 22, 2011 I blogged about Using props as pointers).

 

Before that there was a discussion about the Twinkie Dog, a sandwich sin consisting of a hot dog slipped inside of a split Twinkie rather than a bun. It had been described by Ian Chillag at NPR on January 23, 2012 in an article titled Sandwich Monday: The Twinkie Wiener Sandwich. A version with spray cheese appears in the movie UHF. Of course, there is a YouTube video titled How to make Weird Al Yankovic’s Twinkie Weiner Sandwich.

 

Two other sandwich sins are the Doughnut Burger (with a recipe from Krispy Kreme) and the Chicken and Waffle Sandwich from Carl’s Jr.

 

Defending yourself from ‘gotcha’ questions, and handling difficult audiences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answering questions during and after a speech is an important topic in public speaking. The July/August 2021 issue of Speaker magazine has an excellent article  by Kristin Arnold on pages 18 to 21 titled The ‘Gotcha’ Question. She identifies eight types: ambush, faulty premise, hypothetical, leading, left field (personal attack), loaded, negative, non (really a comment). Then she describes do’s and don’ts, which includes rephrasing questions. As shown above via a cartoon, you need some verbal judo for handling questions.

 

Toastmasters club meetings provide a supportive environment, and discourage disruptions. But at Level 4 in the Pathways program there is a project about Managing a Difficult Audience. It is required in the Presentation Mastery path, but is an optional elective in the other ten paths. For it you give the usual five-to-seven-minute speech followed by a question-and-answer period (for a total of ten-to-fifteen minutes) and try to manage disruptions in a role play. The project evaluation is about how you managed those disruptions rather than the speech itself. On June 9, 2021 I did a speech for this project titled You cannot believe everything you read in Toastmaster magazine. I based it on two of my blog posts: one from August 5 2020 titled When doing research, your attention span should be more than 10 seconds, and a second from August 14, 2020 titled Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is.

 

A post by Julie Kertesz at her Pathways Experience blog on December 15, 2018 titled Some Things Depend on Us & Managing Difficult Audiences briefly describes the five types of Disrupters you will encounter in a role play for this project. The project has detailed advice on handling them. I wrote and rehearsed my speech in a week, so I did not have time to memorize those details. What I did instead was to be nice but not back down. My previous experience as a professional engineer dealing with civil court trials and depositions gave me confidence for handling this project. Back on March 7, 2016 I blogged about Getting comfortable with testifying as a witness.

 

Just a which hunt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On July 1st The Trump Organization and their CFO, Alan Weisselberg, finally were indicted for a variety of financial crimes in a scheme going back to 2005. Politico has an article titled Read the full Trump Organization indictment. It’s a which hunt, not as The Donald has repeatedly whined a political Witch Hunt.  

 

Two articles at The Atlantic on July 3, 2021 discuss the current state of affairs. One by Quinta Jurecic is titled The first glimmer of accountability. A second by Daniel Hemel is titled The Trump organization is in big trouble.

 

A third article at Salon by Brett Bachman titled Brookings report concludes: Donald Trump at “serious risk” of indictment links to a detailed sixty-page description of why titled New York State’s Trump Investigation: An analysis of the reported facts and applicable law.

 

The cartoon was adapted from an 1893 poster at the Library of Congress.

Article by John Bowe says 15 to 30 percent have speech anxiety, rather than the baseless 74 percent he previously had claimed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The July 2021 Toastmaster magazine has an article by Craig Harrison titled Due Your Due Diligence on pages 22 to 25. He says to avoid intellectual complacency and that:

 

“Professional speakers who fact-check know from experience to seek the original source of facts and stats.”

 

Two articles by John Bowe provide us with examples of what not to do. Back on August 14, 2020 I blogged about Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is. In an article by Suzanne Frey in the August issue he said that:

 

“I was thinking about the fact that 74% of Americans suffer from speech anxiety (it is the same or higher in most other cultures).”

 

His book, I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection had more specifically said the 74% came from the National Institutes of Health. I discussed how that percentage really was baseless rubbish from a commercial web site, Statistic Brain.

 

A new article by John Bowe at CNBC on June 21, 2021 is titled Bad at public speaking? Use this mental trick that takes just 15 minutes, says speech expert. It begins by instead stating that:

 

“Speech anxiety is one of the most common social fears, affecting 15% to 30% of the general population.”  

 

He found those two percentages in a one-page magazine article from 2016 titled Observations: Public Speaking Anxiety in Graduate Medical Education – A Matter of Interpersonal and Communication Skills? It was written by Vickram Tejwani, Duc Ha, and Carlos Isada and appeared in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education (February 2016, Volume 8, no. 1 page 111). In the second paragraph they say about public speaking anxiety that:

 

“…. It is reported as prevalent in 15% to 30% of the general population (Ref. 2)….”

 

I had blogged about that article on March 1, 2016 in a post titled 17% of medical residents fear public speaking. They in turn referred to a review article from 2012 by Charles B. Pull titled Current status of knowledge on public speaking anxiety as the source for the 15% and 30%. For his review Pull had searched in the PubMed database up to September 2011. But that review article never explicitly mentions either 15% or 30%. I also had blogged about that article back on January 19, 2013 in a post titled A recent review article on public speaking anxiety.

 

I have blogged about 22 surveys about the fear of speaking in American adults. Based on them, the range really is 40% wide rather than 15% wide, and it runs from 17% to 57%. 13 of those surveys have percentages above 30%. In chronological order, here are the survey year and percentage for fear of public speaking from them, as discussed in my previous blog posts on the dates listed:

 

1973 Bruskin survey - 40.6%; October 27, 2009, The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?

 

1987 Dental Health Advisor – 27%; September 19, 2012, Public speaking came first in a 1987 fear survey by Dental Health Advisor magazine

 

1988 Roper – 26%; September 18, 2012, Snakes came first in a 1988 Roper survey of what American adults were afraid of or bothered by

 

1990 to 1992, National Comorbidity Survey - 15.2% (for talking in front of a small group); January 10, 2021, Do more people fear speaking to large or to small audiences?

 

1990 to 1992, National Comorbidity Survey - 30.2%; November 2, 2008, Public speaking is still the #1 specific social fear, according to the latest results from the NCS-R survey

 

1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey - 45%; May 19, 2011, America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring Survey.

 

1996 Roper survey – 56%; July 3, 2011, More Americans fear public speaking than getting fat, and death tied for third

 

1998 Gallup poll – 45%; March 19, 2001, Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears.

 

2001 Gallup poll – 40%; March 19, 2001, Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears.

 

2001 to 2003 National Comorbidity Survey – Replication - 21.2%; November 2, 2008, Public speaking is still the #1 specific social fear, according to the latest results from the NCS-R survey

 

2009 American Association of Endodontists – 42%; November15, 2009, Getting a root canal done is scarier than public speaking or a job interview

 

2010 LG – 50%; September 21, 2010, According to LG, people fear public speaking even more than cleaning, dentists, or doing taxes

 

2014 YouGov Survey – 56%; April 2, 2014, YouGov survey of U.S. adults found they most commonly were very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space

 

2014 Chapman Survey – 25.3%; October 29, 2014, Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts

 

2015 Chapman Survey – 28.4%; October 15, 2015, Corruption of Federal Government Officials was first in the top ten list from the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

2015 KRC Research – 32%; November 20, 2015, KRC Pulse Poll on American fears found the most common five were heights, public speaking, failure, spiders, and small spaces

 

2016 Kelton Global – 32%; April 30, 2016, Survey finds more U.S. homeowners fear their home being damaged by a natural disaster, or invaded by pests than public speaking, global warming, or a celebrity reality star running for president

 

2016 Chapman Survey – 25.5%; October 14, 2016, In the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears public speaking was ranked 33 rd out of 79 fears

 

2017 Chapman Survey – 23.3%;  October 26, 2017, How can you make a public speaking coach run away like a scared zebra? Just tell them where fear of public speaking ranked in the fourth Chapman Survey on American Fears

 

2018 Chapman Survey – 26.2%; October 19, 2018, You probably won’t hear public speaking coaches discuss the 2018 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

2019 OnePoll survey – 17%; January 29, 2019, Public speaking was only the 7th most common fear of Americans on a Top Ten List in a survey reported on January 24, 2019

 

2019 Chapman Survey – 30.2%; May 24, 2020, You probably won’t hear speaking coaches or motivational speakers cite results about fear of public speaking from the 2019 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

2019 AAE survey – 57%; October 23, 2019, A new survey shows that more U.S. adults fear snakes (64%) than root canals or heights (59%), and speaking in public (57%)

 

Where did Tejwani et al get that range from 15% to 30%? Possibly they looked in Ref. 17 of Pull’s review, a 2009 article by A. W. Blote et al titled The relation between public speaking anxiety and social anxiety: a review, which in turn referred them to a 1998 article by Ronald C. Kessler, Murray B. Stein, and Patricia Berglund in the American Journal of Psychiatry (May 1998, pages 613 to 619) titled Social Phobia Subtypes in the National Comorbidity Survey. As I showed above, that survey found 30.2% feared public speaking and 15.2% feared talking in front of a small group. Those percentages are from a very serious survey, but it was done roughly thirty years ago. It’s not the latest word on that topic.

  

My cartoon image was modified from a clueless man at Wikimedia Commons and a library background at Openclipart.