To begin with, the fact that researchers sound like advocates rather than disinterested fact gatherers is suspicious. Furthermore, neither Columbia doctors nor federal government surveyors have a solitary clue how many teenagers are engaged in sex, wearing condoms or flying kites.

In an article based on the study, researchers admit that several "limitations temper these findings." One of those limitations is that the data were "self-reported" by high-school students, whose information is only slightly more reliable than waterboarded Gitmo terror suspects.

In his thought-provoking book "Fooled by Randomness," Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes the case that we constantly are affixing deep meaning to meaningless statistics. Did you know, for instance, as teen rates have risen, there also has been a national trend of higher birthrates among women in their 20s, 30s and 40s? What does that tell us?

In this case, none of the numbers proves that kids are becoming more promiscuous or acting less safe than they did five or 10 years ago. There is also no proof that either abstinence or sex education programs have had a real effect on teen behavior.

Teen sexual behavior is driven by myriad social, demographic and economic factors (and perhaps most importantly: family). As long as we use the thin gruel of this kind of study to hammer home some ideological point, parents aren't being helped.

The best antidote is probably some hybrid of abstinence programs and others that teach about disease, pregnancy and birth control.

Certainly, we shouldn't dictate to parents (or, in my case, a wife) how they should teach their kids about sex. We also should avoid mass panic when it comes to teen sex.

Individual panic? Now that's a different story.