An increasingly popular approach to curbing student drinking -- called "social norms" -- does not work, according to a new study by Harvard University's School of Public Health.

But researchers who favor the approach say that the Harvard study is flawed and that other studies have proved the effectiveness of social norms. Colleges using a social-norms approach run campaigns highlighting the relatively low drinking levels of average students to show that, contrary to student expectations, campus life does not resemble that depicted in Animal House.

The new study was led by Henry Wechsler, using data from his long-running College Alcohol Study. It compared students at 37 colleges that used social-norms campaigns with those at 61 colleges that did not. Mr. Wechsler found no drop in student drinking at the campuses with social-norms programs, and slight increases in drinking levels at some that tried the method.

"This finding suggests that social-norms marketing as practiced has thus far not been a solution," Mr. Wechsler writes in an article about the study that is slated to be published in this month's issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.

In the article, Mr. Wechsler also criticizes previous research that has found evidence of success in individual social-norms programs. He says that those studies were methodologically flawed.

But Mr. Wechsler, who has long been a vocal critic of the social-norms approach, stops short of saying that his study proves the method is a failure. "I don't know that you can prove a negative; it just fails to find support," he said Thursday in an interview. "At the very least, the onus is on social-norms advocates to produce a scientifically credible study that shows that social-norms campaigns are associated with decreases in drinking levels."

Researchers who advocate social-norms programs were quick to attack the new study.

"The study is clearly flawed," said Michael P. Haines, director of the Social Norms Resource Center at Northern Illinois University. "Even to call it a study is a bit of a stretch," he added, calling it a "quasi-analysis of data gathered for other purposes ... analyzed and manipulated to give the results."

The biggest flaw, he said, is that many of the colleges that Mr. Wechsler studied as practitioners of social-norms approaches do not actually have fully developed social-norms programs.

That charge was echoed by H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and editor of a book of case studies on the topic, The Social Norms Approach to Preventing School and College Age Substance Abuse (Jossey-Bass, 2003). His institution sent out a news release on his behalf Thursday in which Mr. Perkins calls the Harvard study "seriously flawed."

Mr. Perkins said in an interview that during the time span examined in Mr. Wechsler's study -- 1997 to 2001 -- very few colleges had active social-norms campaigns.

And Mr. Wechsler fails to note several existing studies that prove the value of social norms, Mr. Perkins said. The approach has led to a 30-percent drop in "high-risk drinking rates" on his campus in the four years since it started social-norms campaigns, he added.

About 140 colleges have adopted some form of social-norm project, Mr. Perkins said, but only a "couple of dozen" of those have fully developed programs.

Mr. Wechsler defended his study's methodology and said he had looked at several factors to indicate whether a college was using a social-norms approach. "All we can study is social norms as they're currently being practiced," he added.

Will the study dampen enthusiasm for social-norms campaigns?

"I think the greatest potential negative effect it will have," said Northern Illinois's Mr. Haines, "is a chilling effect on administrators who may be on the fence or timid -- because they may be fearful that somebody will wave this study in their face if they try social norms and they don't get success with it."