New research: Condoms "protect" against HPV

Thank goodness this little bitty study came along to refute the yearlong review of 100+ existing studies about condom effectiveness published by the National Institute of Health in 2001. Although many tried to bury that NIH report, the Center for Disease Control confirmed the findings two years later and the results were finally published in the mainstream media. A lot of people got a lot of nasty diseases in that 3-year time span just so the nation's top medical watchdogs were really, really sure the "bad news" about condoms was reliable. In those reports, condoms had zero protective value for HPV. But heck, new studies can always trump previous studies, making them newsworthy no matter how inane they are.

So the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gave this new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine page three prominence. It was a three year study of 83 college girls who were virgins at the start of the study. So how did the researchers convince these girls to have sex for the first time in their lives? Since 1/2 the sexually active population is infected with HPV and there is no way to test boys for the infection, how did they handle that little issue? --the girls had to get HPV for the purpose of the study and to assure exposure, the girls would have to have multiple sex partners. If the objective was to study condom effectiveness, did they ignore the published risk they were placing these girls in? Did they thoroughly educate these human guinea pigs about condoms and the STDs beforehand or just ask them to sign a waiver? Since HPV takes up to nine months after infection to show up in tests, did they isolate the girls and guys after each sex act to control the research factors and prevent the spread of the virus? Did they rely on self-reporting of consistent and correct condom use or just videotape each sexual encounter? How do they know the stats weren't skewed by lack of an HPV infection in either partner rather than condom use? Or the infection was only present in those that used condoms rather than in those that did not? Since 90% of HPV infections clear after an average of 8 months (Range:3-15 months), how do they know they caught all the infections during the study? For the 10% of infections that persist which would be the high risk types, the study wasn't long enough to even determine those infection rates. So those girls could have cancer-causing infections that they might not even followup on thinking they had solid medical opinion. Finally, if this was such a heralded study, why wasn't it presented at the National STD Conference sponsored by the CDC in Jacksonville in late spring rather than just published in a journal?

I'm not a scientist and maybe there are good answers for some of my questions but this sounds like an unethical, inept attempt to contradict a much greater body of evidence while putting some college kids in harm's way. Did the study mention what other STDs they got as well?