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Eur J Epidemiol (2012) 27:827829 DOI 10.1007/s10654-012-9732-4
BOOK REVIEW
Kenneth J. Rothman: Epidemiology. An introduction
2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-975455-7
Andreas Stang
Received: 3 July 2012 / Accepted: 12 September 2012 / Published online: 27 September 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
After his famous text book Modern Epidemiology, since 2008 available in its third edition [1], Kenneth J. Rothman [2] provides a second edition of his introductory level text book. To make a long story shortit is a high-level introductory book that presents multiple concepts of epidemiologic research. In the foreword of the book, Rothman claries a frequent misconception of epidemiology: Some observers appear to believe that epidemiology is no more than the application of statistical methods to the problems of disease occurrence and causation. But epidemiology is much more than applied statistics. It is a scientic discipline with roots in biology, logic, and the philosophy of science.
Rothman continues The emphasis of the book is not on statistics, formulas, or computation but on epidemiologic principles and concepts. The book contains 13 chapters and includes 268 pages. Compared to the rst edition, two chapters entitled Pioneers in Epidemiology and Public Health and Infectious Disease Epidemiology have been added. The book is accompanied by a website that posts answers to the questions raised at the end of each chapter in the text (http://www.oup.com/us/epi
Web End =www.oup.com/us/epi ). This website will also support reader participation in discussing, extending, and revising points presented in the book.
Frequently, introductory text books of epidemiology do not go beyond Bradford Hills viewpoints when they introduce concepts of causation. Chapter 3 entitled What is causation introduces principles of the logic of scientic discovery (induction, refutationism), the sufcient component
cause model, the notion of strong causes, induction and latency time, principles of canonical inference (Bradford Hills viewpoints), and issues related to generalization of study results.
Chapter 4 introduces measures of occurrence and effects including concepts like competing risks, the associations between (1) incidence rate and incidence proportion, (2) prevalence and incidence rate, and (3) the ratio of incidence proportions and incidence rates. Chapter 5 adds related concepts as for instance immortal person time, closed cohorts and dynamic populations. Given that the reader understands the concept of incidence rate, Rothman...