CATHY YOUNG: The MIT Rape Study and Other Sloppy Surveys.

The latest alarming numbers on campus sexual assault come from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey which supposedly shows that 17 percent of female undergraduates have been sexually assaulted during their time at the school. Writing in The Washington Post, columnist Catherine Rampell has invoked these findings as a rebuke to those who have criticized earlier studies for inflating campus sexual assault statistics. But, in fact, the MIT survey starkly illustrates the very problems those critics have pointed out.

For one, there is the issue of response bias, acknowledged at the end of survey itself: only 35 percent of the MIT students who received the survey answered it, and it’s entirely possible that people who have had unwanted sexual experiences were more likely to respond. But, more importantly, there is also a question of how sexual assault is defined.

It’s as if the studies are designed to produce the results they want or something.