Beware of "Research"--a cautionary tale

So, I had another meeting with the Leche League Women. I took my friend, Michelle with me, who is a week and a half from her due date. The topic of the meeting was preparing for birth and taking care of baby once he or she arrives. I have to say, it was a bit less informative than the last meeting, but still some interesting personal tales did come to light that served more as "what not to do" than models to follow.

For example, there was a young mother with a six month old who had strong (and I mean STRONG) family involvement in the raising of her son. She was being pressured by her mother, her grandmother, her pediatrician to do things that she didn't feel were right. For example, she was told to feed her two month old fruit!! This is crazy!

Someone asked about lactose intolerance in babies. She had a friend who was being told to give her baby formula, because the baby was intolerant. This made me ask about reflux, since all I've been hearing from new moms is that their babies were diagnosed with reflux--what is up with that? I was told that was something else and then topic changed.

We were about to leave when the leader of the group said, as an aside, "Be careful with having too many ultrasounds, they are being linked with reflux in babies." Michelle and I said nothing, nodded and waved goodbye.

In the car, we confessed that this had left us a bit worried. We both had gotten ultrasounds at each of our check-ups. We tried to brush it off but the nagging question remained. So, I vowed to do some research on-line. Meanwhile, I reassured her that sometimes studies are done on two events that may be on the rise for separate reasons and then are linked. Finding a causal relationship between these two events proves to be difficult.

The first website I found said all the things I wanted to hear. Basically, it said, don't worry. But, did I stop there...No. Then I found a more troubling site. This was an article posted by a pediatrician, stating the following:

I have noticed in my practice what appears to be a worrying trend. Many babies presenting to my clinic with persistent and severe gastro-oesophageal reflux (GER) have been exposed to multiple ultrasounds prenatally. Has anybody else seen this? Is this something we ought to study?

Then, it sites many different studies that were never fully proved or disproved. Even one study that said that high incidence of ultrasounds might mean the baby will be left handed--which doesn't seem like a terrible side effect to me. Still, how do you study this, how do you prove this? And, more importantly, how do you create a valid and undisputed causal relationship between these two events?

I will not worry, I will not worry, I will not worry. Now, if I click my ruby slippers together, then maybe this will be true.