Yet another study has been released purporting to show that American colleges are just the worst for women. And as you can imagine, multiple media outlets unquestioningly parroted the report's finding and quoted the author's statements in articles that might as well have been reprinted press releases.

Alas, this study, like so, so many before it, suffers from the same flaws that have given most reasonable people pause when deciding whether to believe the claim that 1 in 5 American college women have been sexually assaulted.

First let me point out that when I emailed the study's author, Kate Carey, a Ph.D. at Brown University's department of behavioral and social sciences, about the study's limitations she acknowledged that it is, "Not nationally representative. Our sampling strategy did not allow for that."

We don't need to go further than that, but I will anyway. To begin with, this study used a small sample size (483 freshmen women) at an unnamed "large private university in the northeastern United States." The 483 women, who represented 26 percent of the school's total freshmen female population, were paid $50 — $20 up front for their participation and $10 for each subsequent survey. Surveys like this are always subject to selection bias — those who have an interest in the subject may be more likely to take the survey. This possibility is supported by the survey's data, which found a high rate of claimed completed/attempted rapes for respondents before they even entered college.

Beyond all that, the survey's authors acknowledge at the end of the study that it suffers from limitations, including "reliance on self-report and sampling from a single campus."

Where the study is a little different than others is that it doesn't include fondling or kissing in its definition of sexual assault. Past studies have included such actions to bolster their findings. The study also separates "forcible rape" from "incapacitated rape." Naturally, the study found a higher rate of "incapacitated rape." This is problematic because "incapacitated" is loosely defined early in the paper as "when alcohol or other drugs are used," which would include an exorbitant number of consensual sexual encounters.

The survey's questions in this regard (Dr. Carey provided the study, which was included in the June issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the survey questions to the Washington Examiner) seemed to elicit the desired finding of high rates of sexual assault.

The survey asked four main questions with multiple follow ups. The awkwardly worded first question, which Carey said was not included in the final results, asked respondents "How many times has anyone overwhelmed you with arguments about sex or continual pressure for sex in order to..?" Reread that again. "Overwhelmed you with arguments"? This is an overly scholarly way to ask whether the person had been pressured into sex by words, not actions.

But the first part of the question is troubling as well: " How many times has anyone…" This is one of those loaded questions. A respondent is practically being told that this must have happened to them and the survey simply wants to know how many times it has happened.

The follow up questions break down the different types of physical activity the "overwhelming arguments" led to — fondling? Kissing? Intercourse? And more. A qualifier is added to the end of each of these questions clarifying that the respondent engaged in the physical activity "when you indicated that you didn't want to."

The next two questions follow the same pattern of asking "how many times" someone has forced a respondent into sex, whether by threat or physical force.

But the fourth question, the one that found the high incidence of "incapacitated rape," breaks the pattern. It asks "How many times, when you were incapacitated (e.g., by drugs or alcohol) and unable to object or consent, has anyone..." but doesn't add any kind of "when you didn't want to" qualifier. This opens up the possibility that drunk but wanted sex was included in the survey (perhaps on purpose).

Using these suggestive questions, the survey found that 11.4 percent of respondents faced forcible or incapacitated attempted or completed rapes in the fall semester of their freshmen year. Breaking that down: 4.3 percent said they were the victim of an attempted forcible rape, 3.4 percent of a forcible completed rape, 7.7 percent of an attempted incapacitated rape and 4.5 percent of a completed incapacitated rape.

Together that's 18.6 percent of students claiming to have been a victim of some kind of attempted or completed rape during their freshmen year — which is the only number media lapdogs cared about.

And if you want to know where the study's author is coming from, she claims in the first paragraph that the "Annual incidence of rape among college women has been estimated at 5 percent, five times higher than the rate observed among noncollege women." Actually, the evidence (not estimates based on self-reported surveys) suggests that the incidence of rape on college campuses is six out of 1,000 — or about 2.44 percent over a four-year college period. Moreover, the evidence suggests noncollege students face a higher rate of rape.

Forget the problems with the survey and the fact that its author acknowledges that it's not a nationally representative sample, the headlines are just too good to ignore. The Huffington Post led with "Campus rape may be 'worse than we thought,' study shows." The Washington Post went with "Study finds 'epidemic' of sexual assault among first-year women at one U.S. college." CNN ran with "Study has more disturbing findings about campus rape of freshmen women."

It doesn't matter how many times you repeat a lie — or a flawed study — it will never be true. But such is the state of today's media when it comes to campus sexual assault.