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Back to the topic: Last year, Wouter de Broeck organized a fantastic event at a research center in Belgium and invited me to give a talk.
I met some very inspiring people, one of them being Ruben Vanhome.
Today, I am sharing his story to explore how we can change others' habits and thereby save 80 million Wh of electricity.
Today's Lesson: Making Behaviors Change
A case study on how to tackle false beliefs.
Number Of The Day
Based on data from Ruben, running one of their laminar flow hood 24/7 consumes as much energy as 2.9 households over the course of a year—more than 8 million Wh. It’s not uncommon for scientists to genuinely believe that this practice enhances sterility. However, it does not. On the contrary, it clogs filters and can introduce airborne particles when people disrupt the airflow by walking by too quickly.
8 000 000
New Habits To Save Energy
Ruben is a scientist at the VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology.
His department housed 20 laminar flow hoods, split between plant tissue culture and bacterial work. But...
for everyone with a green heart, there was one glaring issue: they remained on day and night…
The False Believe
The hoods in their department are not the newest models, therefore many scientists believed it would take more than an hour to get them sterile again.
This neat scheme visualizes how Laminar Flow Hoods are kept sterile. Please note that for hoods and biosafety cabinets, there are multiple air-flow and operation modes (just think constant vs variable air flow in hoods). If you like to learn more about Fume Hoods vs Laminar Flow Hood, you can do so here.
However, even these older models require less than a minute to establish proper air flow as Ruben would prove.
-> Remember, behavior is rarely driven by empirical knowledge—it is shaped by assumptions and beliefs
Figuring Them Out
That means, we need to understand those beliefs because merely telling people about the better option will not do the trick. Ruben’s first step was to reach out to the people responsible for the hoods (primarily lab technicians and researchers).
He inquired about the opportunity he saw and what concerns they might have had (=unearthing their beliefs)
“Some were very enthusiastic about turning the flows off during the night and weekends, while others were skeptical about the effect on contamination.”
The Sterility Experiment
After identifying the main (false) believe, the next step was to find the right tool to change their minds.
Publications, case studies, or just a 1:1 conversation can be great tools. In Ruben’s case, concern was tied to a local problem (“this kind of old hood”), thus, creating solid data would be required.
So, he simply measured how long it actually took for a flow hood to regain sterility after being switched back on by placing open plates in the hood at various times after turning them on.
The results were clear: within just one minute, the hood was sterile again. To be on the safe side, he proposed a five-minute waiting period before use each morning.
Spreading the Word
No data and no idea will have an impact without proper communication.
Ruben transparently shared the results with all lab managers and asked for their opinion.
-> Best practice: ask for feedback. This helps people adopt an open mindset and reveals whether critics have issues with your methodology or simply do not understand what you tried to express.
In Ruben’s case, not everyone was immediately convinced. One skeptical PI asked his postdoc to repeat the experiment. When they arrived at the exact same conclusion—sterility after one minute.
-> At first such resistance might seem annoying but in the end you could not ask for a better proof of concept!
Eventually, even the VIB official responsible for good lab practices approved the new rules.
Given that 18 Laminar Flow Hoods are now regularly turned off, the department saves about 57 000€ each year. Pro Tip: communicate these changes to your administration, they might refund you some of these savings!
This update was announced through:
Lab managers announcing the change in group meetings.
An email sent to all researchers.
Clear printouts on the doors of the laminar flow rooms reminding users to turn off the hoods.
Applying The Knowledge
In essence, changing habits comes with three steps:
Identify why people resist (beliefs).
Do what it takes to change those beliefs.
Communicate the story widely and clearly.
Remember, not everyone will join. Even in Ruben’s case where you could not have created more solid data, one PI chose not to adopt the rule, keeping his two laminar flows running 24/7.
Still, taking action might reward you with serendipity.
Ruben and his team realized that, based on the absence of contamination in many media, certain cloning steps could be performed outside the laminar flow—right on the bench. In fact, a former colleague had worked in a lab where this was standard practice, making an even older habit standard again.
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