My Google alert on public speaking led me to a mediocre article about overcoming stage fright by William W. Brown in The Greenville Journal on February 28, 2022 titled For Goodness’ Sake with William Brown: Don’t freak out! He unfortunately opens it (provides ignorance) by stating:
“Public speaking is something we’ll all be tasked with at some point in our lives, even though, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of adults suffer from fear of public speaking.”
But that link to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) doesn’t lead to a web page for that 73% statistic. Why not? Because it’s a bogus statistic that didn’t come from NIMH. Instead it was made up a decade ago by some jerks at a commercial web site called Statistic Brain. On March 22, 2019 I blogged about An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support.
How far off from reality is that 73%? It’s almost 3-1/2 times too high. On August 12, 2015 I blogged about how There’s really no mystery about how common stage fright is.
And on January 10, 2022 I blogged about the seven Chapman Surveys of American Fears in a post titled The opening paragraph of an article on public speaking earns two pinocchios for telling us lies. The widely quoted 2014 one found 25.3% feared speaking, and the average was 26.8%.
The cartoon image was modified from one on page 14 in the April 16 1913 issue of Punch magazine.
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