They say that by employing his five/four definition of binge drinking, Wechsler has co-opted a rhetorically powerful phrase, redefined it too broadly, and used the results to scare the press and the general public about drinking on college campuses.

Wechsler says binge drinking is not the same thing as getting drunk. While the latter relies on a series of factors--including a person's weight, natural tolerance and the amount of time it takes them to consume alcohol--binge drinking, by Wechsler's definition, is a function only of the number of drinks a person consumes.

In fact, Wechsler says it is possible, although unusual, for someone to binge drink but not become drunk.

"[The five/four line] is not an attempt to say that people are legally intoxicated," he says.

Wechsler's definition of binge drinking has made some people uneasy.

"With the term 'binge drinking,' factors such as weight and time consumed are not taken into consideration," says H. Wesley Perkins, a researcher at Hobart University. "If we simply use the five/four measure, we find that a large percentage of people who fall into that category aren't a problem. Why are we contributing to the notion that 40 percent of students are problem drinkers?"

Because of the highly charged connotation of the term "binge drinking," many administrators and researchers have simply decided not to use it.

Kimberley A. Timpf, assistant dean for alcohol and drug education at Boston College, prefers to describe students who drink as either "low risk" or "high risk."

"The term bingeing has traditionally applied to those with serious substance problems," she says. "It doesn't equate appropriately with what most college students are doing."

Wechsler says semantics do not matter.

"People are spending too much time worrying about the word and not enough time worrying about the problem," he says.

What is Socially Normal?

Despite Wechsler's campaigns to publicize the prevalence of heavy drinking on college campuses, bingeing among the nation's students has actually gone up.

Since Wechsler's first study, students have become increasingly polarized in their drinking habits. College campuses have seen fewer moderate drinkers and larger numbers of heavy bingers and abstainers.

As a result, some researchers, funded by hefty government checks and donations from brewing companies like Anheuser-Busch, have pushed for a "social norms" approach emphasizing the prevalence of moderate drinking among students, with the hope of combatting peer pressure to drink heavily.

"We spend so much time telling students about the 25 or 30 percent who are heavy drinkers, but we never tell them that two-thirds of the student population is not engaged in such behavior," Perkins says. "Binge drinking is partially a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students end up drinking at higher levels because that's what they think their peers are doing."