Abstract
In two 1959 papers, one co‐authored, Jerome Cornfield asserts that “relative” measures are more
useful for causal inference while “absolute” measures are more useful for public health purposes. In one of
these papers (the single‐authored one), he asks how epidemiology should respond to the fact that its
domain is not a highly “articulated” one – it is not susceptible to being subsumed under general laws. What
is the connection between these issues? There has recently been some backlash against “risk relativism”,
and Charles Poole has recently dismantled the mathematical argument for the first claim. But the problem
with “Cornfield’s Principle” seems to go much deeper. The whole attempt to partition measures into
absolute and relative is fundamentally mistaken. Why, then, has it seemed so appealing? Perhaps one
reason is the influence that early education in the physical sciences continues to exert on the way
epidemiologists think, and their response to the low articulation of their domain of study.