David F. Duncan

David F. Duncan (born in Kansas City, Missouri on June 26, 1947) is president of Duncan & Associates, a firm providing consultation on research design and data collection for behavioral and policy studies. He is also Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health at Brown University School of Medicine.

He graduated with a B.A. in psychology from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, and completed graduate work in criminology at Sam Houston State University. He earned the degree of Doctor of Public Health from the University of Texas at Houston with an interdisciplinary concentration in behavioral sciences, epidemiology, biostatistics, and program and policy evaluation. He later earned a postdoctoral diploma in alcoholism early intervention and treatment effectiveness research from Brown University.

Duncan is best known for his contributions in the field of drug abuse, which have often been highly controversial. In 1974, he and Edward Khantzian of Harvard Medical School, in separate publications, proposed what has come to be known as the self-medication hypothesis of addiction. Both authors proposed that addiction arose out of the use of drugs to medicate a preexisting disorder or problem. Duncan's version of the hypothesis is distinguished by its identification of addiction with negative reinforcement. Duncan argued that all of the characteristics commonly cited as typical of addiction, such as persistence in the face of negative consequences and high probability of relapse, are all common in any negatively reinforced behaviors.

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