  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
