I first came upon the Joshmeister quite some time ago when he started performing some very interesting analyses of product groups in mostly horizontal comparisons. These can be very interesting and rewarding, as comparisons tend to really put spirits in their place. Not long thereafter, Josh really made big waves that almost put him out of the blogging game, namely his ill conceived "Dark 'n Stormy Challenge" comparing various dark rums as to which made the best D&S. Only one problem...
Like the beloved Pussers' Painkiller, the Dark 'n Stormy is trademarked - legally and rightfully. Both Tobias and Family Gosling are very small producers who have worked very hard to create their spirits and their own signature drinks. Good on them! Sadly for Josh, a trademark owner is for all practical purpose, forced to defend their hard won work lest the protected name - undefended - enters the public domain (ever make a "Xerox" copy - no longer protected).
Anyway, moi and at least one other poster advised him that his "Challenge" was a trademark violation, and that he ought change the name to say, "Dark Rum Challenge" or the like. He laughed it off with a certain smugness - which lasted less than a week whereupon he received a "Cease and Desist" love note from Gosling's New York law firm. This good friends is called a sobering experience.
Josh later admitted he'd gone too far, and nearly lost his "eye of the tiger" insofar as blogging is concerned.
Thankfully he persevered...
And I'm glad he did. I really do like his writing and Josh does some terrific work, particularly with highly interesting horizontal flights and similar (legal) challenges. He publicly apologized to Gosling (though he didn't have a choice), and truthfully got off fairly easy considering that treble damages can apply. Personally, I find his reviews to be good reading. In fact, they are such good reading, and of such length that I simply didn't notice that he posted ratings.
Not counting his other blog posts and comparisons, Josh has now put 51 rums under his reviewing belt and thus deserves an analysis. To my great regret, I performed one. Here 'tis...
. . . . . . .
![Image](http://rumproject.com/images/InuAKenaAnalysis.jpg)
Ouch! Double ouch! Mega OUCH!!! Those of you who are familiar with scoring are by now completely familiar with the expected bell curve, wherein an "average" score should fall in the 70-79 range (yellow), with equal but diminishing scores on either side. In sum the good old "bell curve". Josh's distribution is not even close, not even remotely. His bias toward handing out "5-Star", "A" or "90-100" scores is total.
I also discovered that Josh, like the Wolf (but unlike moi and Liquorature) seeks out "free samples". Whether such freebies are cause for such scoring or not is not certain, but it's really hard not to wonder. Josh has also engage in another amateurish endeavor...
Like Wolf and the now departed Lance of Liquorature, he has adopted their unusual practice of slicing and dicing a review into subscores, namely:
Appearance: 1 point
Aroma: 2
Mouth feel: 1
Taste: 4
Aftertaste: 2
Total: 10 possible
Further I even found him awarding a scores that included just 1/4th of a point, an interval so small as to be near meaningless. Most of you are by now well aware that the very best reviews are mercifully short, but very competent and don't bother with scoring any one element, but rather are far more concerned with an overall and single score that reflects the far more important factors...
"Harmony; seamless integration where no one element dominates over the other elements" (the factors/elements that make a rum great, per F. Paul Pacult),
This is proper. Slicing and dicing is not common for good reason: it isn't really competent. It is entirely possible for a rum to score well in each sub category, but which remains choppy, hollow, and anything but harmonious and integrated - and a bad experience. Such schemes are cute and try to look clever and competent, but in fact are not. Indeed such schemes make proper rating (and understanding) more difficult and harder to interpret. Such dissection ignores the big picture, F. Paul's factors and defies commonly accepted practices.
A word to Josh:
Josh, I think you're a good guy, and I believe you are open-minded. Please understand that however well meaning you are, your scores are so heavily biased as to be unreliable and cannot be compared to reviewers whose 5-Star ratings truly represent exceptional rums.
Please also do not fall prey to the myth that "I pick better rums" so naturally I give higher scores. Although this may cause a slight shift, it is a given that any selection falls into a relatively normal distribution unless there is bias, or a gross error in design.
I believe you mean well. Do yourself and the reading public a favor: lose the ratings - they are so high as to hurt you - and keep the rest, which is colorful, fun and interesting.
Rating (five is best): 3, terrible scoring but a well intended, well written and interesting site.