Sanity in Scientific Reporting

Here's a piece by Bean at LG&M on a study that finds a correlation between caffeine intake and miscarriage. The alarmists, of course, are immediately declaring that pregnant women should cut out caffeine completely. However:

Thankfully, there is one voice of reason in the panic over perfect pregnancy. Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, a professor at Columbia Medical School and the director of their family planning clinic rides to the rescue:

"[Dr. Westhoff] said that most miscarriages resulted from chromosomal abnormalities, and that there was no evidence that caffeine could cause those problems.

'Just interviewing women, over half of whom had already had their miscarriage, does not strike me as the best way to get at the real scientific question here,' she said. 'But it is an excellent way to scare women.'"

Do I really need to point out the parallels between this and the reporting on MRSA?