"Good 5 Cent Cigar"----Student newspaper at the University of Rhode Island

    For years teachers and others have quoted a study that says, "People fear speaking in front of a group more than they do dying."  It is one of those great examples of how terrified folks are when it comes to public speaking.  Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to track down this "study."

    We sent a note to Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski, who addressed the issue in his column (12/18) in the Star Magazine.  Looks like he wasn't able to locate the mythical study either...

A Cup of Joe

Joe used 10 percent of his brain to write this

Some weeks, one column just isn’t enough. A whole bunch of you wrote in to bust your favorite myths. We offer three of our favorites, along with some random thoughts. It’s like getting seven columns for the price of one.

Mythbusting No. 1. John Landsberg of Bottom Line Communications writes in to question the now-famous study that says people are more afraid to speak in front of a group than they are of dying. It seems everyone has mentioned this odd fact, and it led to one of Jerry Seinfeld’s best jokes: “That’s means, if you’re at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

But is the study real? Unlikely. I have looked and looked and can’t find any sort of scientific study that proves this. This whole thing seems to have come from The Book of Lists, which, at least at one point, listed public speaking as humans’ No. 1 fear, followed by heights and darkness. Death was seventh. In another version of The Book of Lists, public speaking was followed by heights, insects, water and then death.

Meanwhile, in The Top 10 of Everything book, released earlier this year, “fear of spiders” was No. 1.

And I seem to recall that once, on “Family Feud,” the No. 1 fear was mistakenly wandering into a Michael Bolton concert and having the door slammed behind you. But that might just have been a bad dream after late-night pizza.