Dan Malleck
Historian – Author – Speaker
Making sense of the complex world of alcohol policy and research.
It’s enough to drive you to drink.
I provide research, commentary, and historical perspectives on alcohol and drug policy, health research, and regulation
Public Engagement
I regularly engage with academic, professional, industry, and public audiences through presentations, media appearances, panel discussions, and public lectures. My goal is to bring historical perspective and nuance to contemporary debates about alcohol, public health, and regulation.
History in Practice
I provide historical insight and contextual analysis for organizations, researchers, policymakers, and creative projects. Whether the goal is understanding a policy debate or developing a compelling story, my work helps place contemporary questions in their broader historical and cultural context.
My publications
My books and articles explore the history of alcohol and drug regulation, public drinking, public health, and the politics of risk. Together they offer a long-view perspective on some of today’s most contentious policy debates. And if I’m being brutally honest, they are pretty good reads.
About me
I study how societies think about alcohol, risk, regulation, and public health. As a historian of alcohol and drug regulation, my work explores the ideas, assumptions, and recurring debates that continue to shape contemporary policy discussions.
Through research, speaking, and consulting, I help place today’s controversies in their broader historical and cultural context.
Read the full self-indulgent bio here
From Distillations (my blog)
Thoughts about drink, risk, evidence, and culture.
- How culture scrubbing denies context and reinforces dumb stereotypesIf you remove something as complex as consuming alcoholic beverages from its cultural context, the knock-on effects are remarkable. Consider the fact, recognized broadly even by some of the most ardent advocates of the population health epidemiological approach to distorting health effects of drink, that people of higher incomes tend to have better health outcomes… Read more: How culture scrubbing denies context and reinforces dumb stereotypes
- Culture scrubbing. What are population level alcohol studies doing to real life?Data scientists often engage in a process called data scrubbing, or ” cleaning” the data. It’s not nefarious, it is just the way to ensure that the data they are using is the most reliable and analyzable data available. Although the decisions on data scrubbing are based upon researchers’ ideas of what kind of data… Read more: Culture scrubbing. What are population level alcohol studies doing to real life?
- Anti-alcohol advocacy narrative.Aka: The horror. The horror *Originally posted on Linked in May 2026* I’ve been thinking a lot about the dominant narratives coming out of alcohol research that uses population-level data and the advocates who amplify it. A subtle but dominant undercurrent reiterates a link between pleasure and risk. This has deep cultural manifestations: -Hansel and… Read more: Anti-alcohol advocacy narrative.
- Accepted narratives drive analytical choices*Originally posted to LinkedIn May 2026* In a recent JAMA Network article reassessing evidence of alcohol harm over time, the authors concluded that there was no significant benefit to moderate drinking; they effectively eliminated the J-curve. One reason the J-curve disappears is that the researchers treated self-reported abstainers as unreliable and removed them from the… Read more: Accepted narratives drive analytical choices