Don't know much biology*

In my job I interview a lot of academics. They can be great people to talk to, they're often genuine experts and their job is thinking. Years ago, I read a quote from the Dean of Engineering at Auckland University. It went along the lines of "Few Cabinet Ministers, in my experience, are used to sustained thought". Well, yes. That's because the skills that make for an effective politician don't usually involve sustained thought, not in terms of grappling with an intellectual challenge anyway. But I digress.

The trouble with many academics is that they often don't appear to say anything. There is a disconnect between what we in the media want, something simple and definite, and the way that so much of the world actually works - complex and ambiguous. Academics are grappling with that complexity and ambiguity, and they don't want the simplification to be wrong. (They also don't want to be sniped at by their peers, who may be a bit - how shall I put this - jealous of any media profile)

All of this explains much of what can be an unhappy relationship between academia and the media, but as far as today is concerned, it's just background. Because today I interviewed an academic who had things to say and said them well.

We were talking about sex education in schools - something the Public Health Association (along with 28 other groups) is calling for a much more comprehensive approach on. I put it to Angela Taft that some critics of sex education oppose giving teenagers information, essentially on the grounds that they will use it to have sex.

She shot that point of view down so quickly it was the intellectual equivalent of watching a ninja take out an unknowing guard in the movies. Sweden, she told the Life Matters audience, has had a comprehensive sex education approach since 1945. Other Scandinavian countries have also been taking this path for decades. Their teenagers begin having sex later than ours and their rates of teenage pregnancy are half what ours are. The evidence is overwhelming.

Not that one or two newspaper columnists will let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of a good rant though. Watch this space.

*With apologies to Sam Cooke