Colorado's rape survey invited banner headlines-and got them. "1 in 7 women raped," said the Denver Rocky Mountain News, and that was a restrained interpretation compared with the official press release, which claimed the survey "revealed that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 17 men have been raped."

But the results are much more ambiguous than that, and the headlines are dangerously misleading.

The survey was carried out by Colorado Sexual Assault Prevention, a program of the state Department of Public Health and Environment and the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault. They added their questions about assault to an ongoing statewide…