Feinstein received his medical degree (MD, 1952) at the University of Chicago School of Medicine.
[4] In 1962, Feinstein joined the Yale University School of Medicine faculty and became the founding director of its Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program in 1974.
In 1991, Feinstein was named the Sterling Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Yale University's most prestigious academic honor.
The award is "given to an American physician who has made a major contribution to the science of patient care in activities that Dr. Feinstein has broadly defined as clinical epidemiology or clinimetrics, involving the direct study of patients' clinical conditions.
"[11] In his later years, controversy marred his career with claims that he may have aided the tobacco industry by publishing articles minimizing the deleterious effects of smoking.
[13] However, this review itself, an invited article written soon after Feinstein's death and published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, may not be unbiased.
While the brief defense of the authors' right to publish never mentioned Feinstein's own tobacco industry sponsorship, he made his position clear in the brief piece which ended with "The 'bad guys,' of course, are not always right, but if they are denied a fair and proper scientific hearing, neither society nor science will benefit.