After scouring the interwebs I found the following answer. The problem is with the 'IN' clause. As articulated here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/doctrine-dev/-_cINyk2dvs
My problem was being caused by the fact that I was building the 'IN' array as a string.
$s = "1,4"
instead of
$s = array(1,4);
This made all the difference in the world, and also made me feel like a n00b.