Mindel C. Sheps: Counted, dead or alive

In the 1958 paper “Shall we count the living or the dead”, Canadian physician and biostatistician Mindel C. Sheps proposed a novel approach to choice of effect measure, which resolves key theoretical shortcomings of relative risk models. Sheps’ insights have been independently rediscovered multiple times in different academic disciplines, and her approach is consistent with influential work on mechanism of action from toxicology, as well as work on causal generalizability from the psychology and philosophy literature