I agree with this. The Media are complicit out of naivete and a desire for ratings and readers.
“…Junk science — worthless theories or data presented as fact — can be found everywhere, from scientific journals to media reports. It’s become a profitable industry, where scheming researchers get taxpayer-funded grants to find specific conclusions, then those manipulated and fake conclusions are reported back to the public as if they are real, and then policies and recommendations are made that further cost people money.
A good example of this is “research” surrounding sexual assault statistics. Researchers at universities use taxpayer dollars to find out how many women and men are sexually assaulted on campus. They don’t specifically ask if anyone has been sexually assaulted, instead they ask about a wide range of behaviors the researchers then deem to be sexual assault, such as “unwanted” behaviors. The behaviors need not fit into a legal definition of sexual assault or rape, but if respondents answer “yes,” they are considered sexual assault victims.
These “researchers” then report unrealistically high numbers of women to be victims, and the media uncritically broadcasts the findings, which is why you repeatedly see reports that “1-in-5” women have been sexually assaulted during college.
Unscrupulous activists and lawmakers then use these junk findings to make harmful policies. The Obama administration cited the “1-in-5” statistics as justification for removing due process rights and basic fairness from campus sex assault tribunals…”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/38793/junk-science-everywhere-and-media-eat-it-ashe-schow