By Nicholas G. Jenkins

November 4, 2003-In a study entitled "Watering Down Drinks: The Moderating Effect of College Demographics on Alcohol Use or High-Risk Groups," Professors Henry Wechsler, Ph.D. and Meichun Kuo of Harvard's School of Public Health concluded that white males on college campuses cause each other to binge drink. Study the study, however, and a more apt title comes to mind-"Watered Down Logic."

The study supposedly asked "whether colleges with larger enrollments of students from demographic groups with lower rates of binge-drinking [women and minorities] exert a moderating effect on students from groups with higher binge drinking rates (white males)." It analyzed data from 52,312 students at predominantly white colleges from the 1993, 1997, 1999, and 2003 College Alcohol Study surveys.

According to Harvard's press release-which announced the study and will be the only thing about it anyone actually reads-the professors concluded that binge-drinking rates among white, male and underage students are lower at college campuses that have larger proportions of minority, female, and/or older students. The study also found that greater diversity on campuses may serve as a "risk-protective factor," even for those who were binge drinkers in high school. That is, incoming white freshmen who did not binge drink in high school were less likely to start binge drinking as college students if their universities had higher proportions of African American, Latino, Asian or older students. Conversely, incoming white freshmen who were binge drinking in high school were less likely to continue binging when attending schools with higher percentages of minority or older students. This "risk protective" finding is, in the words of the press release, its "most significant" conclusion.

Now these are sensational conclusions; one problem-they don't follow. It's one thing to show a correlation between more female or African American students and lower binge drinking rates. The study indeed did that. But it's quite another to conclude that the former causes the latter. I've seen shaky logic in academic studies before, but this takes the keg.

There are-dare I say-other, more common sense explanations. Wechsler himself admits deep in the text of the actual study, "colleges that have larger numbers of minority and older students and women may attract white, underage and male students with different attitudes about drinking." In other words, lunkheads who binge drink might be more attracted to the Arizona States of the world than the Yales or Harvards.

Another alternative may be that male students prone to binge drinking do not get accepted to schools with larger numbers of minority and older students. If there's an inverse correlation between high school binge drinking and grade point averages, and a positive correlation between premier schools and diversity-and I'm sure Harvard would be proud to say there is-then that's as good a bet as any.

But neither of these possibilities mattered to the Harvard PC-er, PR-machine that issued the press release, nor did the causal issue matter much to Dr. Wechsler, who, in paragraph three of the press release, announced like a proud papa, "this study has shown that having a diverse student body on college campuses is an important factor in lowering binge-drinking rates." (Italics mine.)

There is no mention of alternate causal explanations, which made Wechsler's next leap easy, "In making decisions about admissions, colleges should recognize the many benefits of greater diversity on campus, including a possible decrease in problem drinking."

Nicholas G. Jenkins serves as the chief executive officer of the www.thefence.com