The academic culture is a highly critical culture, in which the reasons for actions and patterns are constantly being examined and re-evaluated. In such a culture, taboos and rituals are seldom acknowledged and change often. So, in academia, promotion of a safety culture is likely to be more effective than a danger culture in changing peopleUs behavior. My thinking on this issue was spurred by a conference on managing the risks of biotechnology. It was pointed out there that government regulations are an attempt to impose an instant danger culture on society.
Regulations focus on proven dangers, rather than benefits derived from safe practices.
These sorts of regulations are not very effective in either settling risk controversies or changing behavior, because they attempt to impose a risk culture on a group rather than letting the group develop their own. A group will seldom accept a risk culture imposed from outside, because a risk culture must be based on the groupUs physical experience over a period of time to become respected. In my opinion, OSHA regulations are a fine example of an imposed danger culture. In applying these concepts to academia, I thought about lab culture. Lab cultures tend to be relatively homogenous between campuses, because there is a lot of interaction and communication among laboratories.