A new report from the Public Interest Research Groups and students across the country have “accused publishers of arbitrarily pushing up the cost of textbooks, saying those increases have dramatically outpaced inflation in recent years.” But, as a San Jose Mercury News report by Becky Bartindale notes, “The Association of American Publishers offered dueling statistics Tuesday and quickly branded the new report as suffering from flawed methodology, misrepresentation and selective use of data.” “They don’t have all the data,” said AAP spokesman Bruce Hildebrand. “The average student spends more on cell phones than on textbooks.” But the PIRG report says “Textbook prices have increased at four times the average rate of inflation,” and it also “assails several publisher practices it criticized a year ago: frequent publication of new, more costly editions with minimal content changes and the bundling’ of textbooks with supplementary material such as CD-ROMs and workbooks.” A Bend.com report on the PIRG findings gives more details, and notes significant support of the students’ complaints from faculty members at various schools. For example, it says 76% of the faculty surveyed “said that new editions were only justified ‘half the time’ or less,” and that 65%% of faculty surveyed thought additional “bundled” items were useful “rarely” or “never.” Notes the Bend.com report, “This contradicts the claim made by publishers that faculty demand drives the production of new editions and bundles.”