I dare you, John Mack!!!

John tries to prove in his post The Rost Self-Promoting Spin Machine is in Full Gear! that what I claimed in my post BrandweekNRX blows the whistle on the "Pharma Blogosphere Survey" is wrong.

Most importantly, he defends his survey and objects to my statement "It turns out that in the "biggest pharma blog survey ever conducted," John didn’t really do a survey of pharma blog readers. He simply ended up with responses from his own readers of his Pharma Marketing Blog."

So in his rebuttal, John writes:

"Yes, 73% of the 144 or so respondents claimed they read Pharma Marketing Blog (this excludes those that Never or Rarely read it). A respectable 31% of the survey respondents also read Peter Rost's blog (Question Authority) and 73% of those people also read Pharma Marketing Blog. If most respondents ALSO read my blog, that says more about the popularity of my blog than about "surveying ONLY my readers," which is how Rost sees it."

And John knows how to use statistics . . . as we all know there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

So if we instead look at the raw data in John's survey, and select only the respondents who actually read any blog once a week (anything less is hardly a regular reader), we find that only about 10% of the respondents read Question Authority at least once a week, however, almost 50% read the Pharma Marketing Blog - John's blog - once a week or more.

Based on John's comments above, clearly he feels this says "more about the popularity of his blog," the Pharma Marketing blog, than about the survey. Essentially he implies that he has more readers. But if he doesn't, that would prove, again, the survey is based on faulty premises.

As for me I stand by my original statement - John simply surveyed his own readers. Check the link for yourself to the raw data, above.

But let's make really sure that I'm right and John is wrong.

So here's my challenge to John: Show us your readership for the Pharma Marketing Blog over a recent six month period, the way I've done this below.

Here are my numbers, now, publish yours! (Already published once before, here.) If you don't come close, (or, really, generate 5x more readers) your survey is dead, since it has no relationship to reality.



And it certainly can't be used to ask for Brandweek to fire me, the way you did this when you wrote, "IMHO, Brandweek should seriously consider the data I have presented above, because it signals that BrandweekNRX may lose some of its credibility and usefulness, especially among its most important audience: pharmaceutical executives."

By the way, John is already back tracking from this statement, saying " I never strongly or otherwise suggested that Brandweek fire him."

Huh?

What did you suggest they do, based on your "data"?

Neuter me?

Change my name?

Seriously. John, don't you try to weasel out of this one.

You also wrote:

"So Rost as BrandweekNRX blogger makes perfect sense... if you intend to flush your blog down the drain as far as pharmaceutical industry readers are concerned -- except for their lawyers, that is."

and you stated, "BrandweekNRX's readership will drop (perhaps after an initial transient uptick attributable to curiosity"

and . . .

"The notoriety, however, will not last long. Perhaps that's why Rost hints his stint at BrandweekNRX may only be a temporary assignment (ie, "for a while"). Maybe it's destined to last only until Brandweek sees the numbers from its own reader research!"

Are you SURE you don't want Brandweek to fire me?

Stop messing around, John. We want your numbers. Now.