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The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel
Posted by
michael
on Sun Nov 21, 2004 06:00 PM
from the guinea-pig dept.
from the guinea-pig dept.
flyingtoaster writes "For the second year in a row, Popular Science published their annual countdown of the worst jobs in science. This year's list includes Anal-Wart Researcher, Iraqi Archaeologist and Landfill Monitor. And you think your job's bad?" We also linked to last year's list.
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Entertainment: Dirtiest Jobs in Science 120 comments
ExE122 writes "CNN and CareerBuilder have posted a listing of the top 10 dirtiest jobs in science. 'Whether they are sifting through reeking mud banks to find cures for contamination, or sorting stool samples to get to the bottom of our bathroom dilemmas, these are some of the science jobs that sacrifice their time, energy and comfort for the greater global good.' Sounds like a job opportunity for Mike Rowe!" From the article: "Hot-zone Superintendent - What they do: Perform maintenance work for bio-safety labs that study lethal airborne pathogens, for which there is no known cure. Their work enables scientists to study the nature of disease-causing organisms, such as anthrax."
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IT: Microsoft Security Makes "Worst Jobs" List 177 comments
Stony Stevenson asks, rhetorically, "What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers, and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science." Quoting: "The MSRC ranked near the middle as the sixth-worst job in this year's list.. 'We did rate the Microsoft security researcher as less-bad than the people who prepare the carcasses for dissection in biology laboratories,' Moyer said. Moyer didn't have to think long when asked whether he'd rather have the number 10-ranked whale research job. 'Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher,' he said. 'Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?'" Here's the Popular Mechanics list all on one page.
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Where is? (Score:5, Funny)
Those sound like bad jobs to me ;-)
Re:Where is? (Score:3)
Re:Where is? (Score:5, Funny)
It said the worst jobs in science. Nothing scientific about this place...
Parent
EA Games Programmer (Score:4, Funny)
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/11/21/1746257.
EA Researcher (Score:5, Funny)
what about... (Score:5, Funny)
Computer scientist is a scientist, no?
Tampon Squeezer (Score:5, Funny)
#4 is Tampon Squeezer
On the other hand, Tampon Tester would rate as one of the best jobs ever.
*sigh*
Sorry if I grossed someone out.
Grossed out (Score:5, Funny)
Your Sig was the worst part.
Parent
Re:Tampon Squeezer (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. Tried it. They taste terrible.
Parent
Re:Tampon Squeezer (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Career most applicable (Score:3, Funny)
Anal wart (Score:5, Funny)
I love my job.
Go Helpdesk! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go Helpdesk! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
WMD (Score:5, Funny)
The jobs not done until you find at least one.
Re:WMD (Score:3, Funny)
Not as bad as my job... (Score:5, Funny)
Consequences of Bush's Iraq War (Score:3, Insightful)
The cradle of civilization and agriculture. The first place humans built cities. The birthplace of writing. And--oh, yeah--currently the best place in the world to get yourself kidnapped or killed. For archaeologists, there's no plum like Iraq. Saddam actually let them do their job, and he even protected his country's heritage in museums. But now no archaeologist can work in Iraq until security improves. Meanwhile more than 8,500 treasures have been stolen, and those are just from museums, where artifacts are cataloged.
What truly troubles archaeologists is imagining what's being taken from their dig sites in the field. Archaeologist Francis Deblauwe, who is trying to keep tabs on the looting, knows of more than 30 important digs, including ancient Babylon, that have been despoiled, but he notes that his list is "very preliminary and grossly incomplete." When the researchers do get to go back in, they'll be able to determine which sites have been looted. But they'll never know what's been taken.
Sheesh! And I wonder how many such 'casualities' of war we ignore. Really sad.
War is not just people, it's a whole lot more. And as an amateur archaeologist, I really do feel bad. And these things are irreplaceable.
hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Consequences of Bush's Iraq War (Score:5, Informative)
Things are a litte more complex than that little blurb in the article suggests. Saddam's interest in archaeology tended to be self-serving, such has when Saddam rebuilt Babylon [about.com]:
The problems in Iraq aren't new. Many of the problems in Iraq date back to at least Saddams invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War [umd.edu].
Saddam's military made a practice of stationing military units by antiquities to protect them from attack [opinionjournal.com]. There are many recorded instances, including these gems:
The desecrations of burial grounds in Iraq aren't anything new. They happened to burial grounds [bbc.co.uk]after the first Gulf War too.
The looting of the museums was also overstated [globalsecurity.org] as well.
FWIW: In Afghanistan, the Taliban was destroying priceless cultural artifiacts [bbc.co.uk] as being anti-Islamic. The US intervention in Afghanistan stopped that, and the new government is committed to preserving such artifacts.
Parent
Science teacher? (Score:3, Insightful)
What? No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, my own mother threatened to take me out if they taught me evolution. It didn't happen, but I shudder to think of other students who did have that happen to them.
Also, science is one of the most poorly funded departments across the nation. Hell, team sports such as Football and Soocer, even electives such as music get more funding in some areas.
So yes, they've got one of the worst jobs in science: teaching it to the next generation.
Parent
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just thankful we don't have too many of these people in Australia, although the number is growing, largely because, I suspect, science education is poorly funded here too.
Parent
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it troubles me greatly, as does your post and far, far too many just like it. The word "theory" in science doesn't mean "half-assed guess" like it does in normal parlance. It means an idea that has been rigorously tested and is supported by a mountain of evidence. Theory of relativity. Theory of gravity. Germ theory. Theory of evolution. All supported by mountains of evidence, all have stood the test of time and are all highly unlikely to go away anytime soon. Sure any one or more of them could be wrong. Some may be able to adapt to new evidence, some might (heavy, very heavy emphasis on might) be relegated to the scrapheap of disproven scientific ideas...like phlogiston or creationism. The latter one is the most troubling. Two hundred years ago the dominant scientific idea in the west was a special creation taking place 6000 years ago. Christian geologists went out looking for this, but instead found evidence incompatible with a young earth, thus refuting young-earth creationism (note: not creation, a supernatural event and thus outside the realm of science. A god or gods could create using any means s/he/it/they deem appropriate and are thus undetectable to naturalistic science). Modern day creation-science and its bastard child "intelligent design" are just attempts to turn back scientific progress over 200 years. So yes, it does bother me a great deal to see that certain well-established scientific theories are thrown out because of the religous ideology of certain groups. Whats worse is that these religious radicals aren't objecting to the science, they're objecting to the implications of established science towards certain literalistic interpretations of the Bible, not science at all. There is one scientifically valid idea about the origin of species currently, and like it or not it is evolution.
Parent
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:4, Interesting)
So I'm used to dealing with invective, and even the religious right. A few might be my neighbors. But I reject your hypothesis. "Slightly over 40 percent of Americans" is an extreme interpretation of a stastic of relgious beliefs. My own mother admits she feels the Old Testament to be closer to myth than reality, and generally believes that evolution holds more scientific merit than the newly uprising creationist theory. Some Catholics don't adhere to the abolition of birth control, and I hear some even support abortions. Simply because 40 percent marked down Catholic or Protestant or whatever that number includes doesn't mean they hold belief in common with every other member of the congregation. In fact, I'd say thats downright impossible. Personally, I think that Lamarck had better science than creationism or whatever you call it today; a text cannot be adequate substitute for experimental investigation and observation. And I'm not willing to sign off on ignoring evolutionary theory because its spiritually convinient.
Its debateable whether one can call creationism a theory, and I'm willing to let it into our textbooks, but to exclude evolution is both ridiculus and ignores what is the most plausible theory put forth yet. I think mutual inclusion is perhaps a decent middle grounds to acommodate our individual beliefs.
So when I hear people complain about teaching evolution in the classroom, I say to them: fine, butif you don't want it in the classroom, don't expect your children to attend college. In the suburb where I live, that works reasonably well. In other parts of Kansas, that statement would likely be met with laughter, and likely acceptance of the terms.
Parent
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's not debatable whether one can call creationism a theory because it's not. Let's start with the deifinition of a theory:
Since creationism/intelligent design relies on a supreme being to start the whole thing rolling, a being which can neither be proven nor disproven, the arguments for these concepts fall flat. Without being able to verify or deny any part of ones thoughts (I refuse to call them theories) you cannot have a theory. End of story.
One can argue until they're blue in the face about how their evidence shows they're thoughts are just as plausible as someone elses but unless/until they can offer proof of a supreme being their ideas are relegated to the same pile as Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.
Next thing you know people will want to believe that the Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old and was made by the flood during Noahs time. Oh wait, that's already [tagnet.org] being done [peer.org].
Well at least the fact that humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time is still a safe subject. Er, maybe [creationists.org] not [answersingenesis.org].
Parent
Re:Science teacher? (Score:5, Insightful)
The opposite is true too. If you have a bunch of interested students you can put together a great class with very few supplies.
Science teacher absolutely deserves to be on the list as long as a large part of our society still sees no value in education.
Parent
Re:Science teacher? (Score:5, Insightful)
If america is going to maintain a competive edge in the world, we have to get kids excited abotu science. There are lots of great universities out there, but what happens when kids come out of high school hating science beacuse they had bad teachers?
Parent
Bush on "science" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bush on "science" (Score:3, Informative)
Nurse is on the list, thats really really BAD! (Score:5, Informative)
What a shame.
In our Internet-based summons for readers to top (bottom?) last year's "Worst Jobs" list, nurses nominated themselves in droves: "Still a no-respect profession. Doctors treat you like slaves." "The pay is substandard for all the training." "Just look at the current shortage." Indeed, the government estimates that we're short 110,000 nurses, and that by 2008 we'll need half a million more.
Numerous studies echo the dissatisfaction of our nurse readers. Nurses are fleeing the profession because of stress, long hours, low pay and lack of advancement opportunities. The cost? A recent University of Pennsylvania study found that surgical patients at hospitals with the worst nurse-staffing levels (ergo the most overworked nurses) have a 31 percent greater chance of dying. If this trend doesn't improve, we might soon find "patient" topping our list.
Re:Nurse is on the list, thats really really BAD! (Score:4, Interesting)
If there's disrespect among mid and upper-level providers (MD's and other staff) toward nurses perhaps it's because of a lack of understanding of each other's tasks / responsibilities / liabilities / time demands. While it's true that nurses have a very tough job for 8-12 hours/day, other providers also have difficult jobs.
As to nurses "fleeing" the profession, I'm surprised as there are numerous articles describing the flock of women and men TO the nursing profession and the 2-year wait to be accepted into many nursing schools.
Parent
Re:Nurse is on the list, thats really really BAD! (Score:4, Informative)
Then thank you for the job you do.
The "other" nursing specialties do require more training and that's part of their career path (like everyone else). Primary Care Nurse Practioners make on national average $69K [salary.com]. I dated a NP for 7 years (she was a "floor RN" for four of those years), she now makes $85K and a friend of hers is a NP for a hospital specialty department and makes $100K. The friend has no call and the former gf gets paid extra for each weekend she works ($1500 for Fri to Sun--double that if it's a holiday). The median salary for a CRNA is $118K [salary.com].
Unlike many 9-5 jobs (or 7-3), many jobs in the medical profession are not 40-hour weeks. Many are much more (especially if you count call nights/weekends). When I was a resident, an 80-hour week was considered short (this was of course before resident hour limitations initiated in New York).
Parent
Think those are bad? (Score:5, Funny)
Some of those were hard just to list.
ARRRRRRRRRRGH! (Score:4, Funny)
Picture the puke scene from Team America: World Police and you've got a good idea of HALF of what I just went through.
You, sir, should be kicked off slashdot, post-haste.
-paul
Parent
Grad student (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Grad student (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Grad student (Score:3)
Re:Grad student (Score:4, Informative)
Ummmm. . . I'm in biology, and I get $24,500 starting out - more this semester because I'm also teaching. This is about the most any school pays, actually, but the top biology programs are all pretty comparable. For a single 20-something, it's good money, even if I took a large pay cut to go back to school. Students on external fellowships make even more: the NSF now pays upwards of $30,000 a year, and more if you teach.
Frankly, I couldn't be happier with my position, despite the attempts of our local grad student union to convince us that we're oppressed. However, after I graduate I can either go consult (shitloads of $$, but no science or fame), work for a biotech or big pharma (good $$, okay science, probably no fame), or become a perma-postdoc (no $$, awesome science, probably no fame). I could get all three as a faculty member at a good university, but there are vastly fewer jobs available than candidates, and you have to be some combination of brilliant, extremeley focused, well-connected, and just plain lucky. I'm well-connected, but only reasonably intelligent, and I can't focus worth shit, so unless I get really lucky I'm not getting one of those jobs. Sort of depressing, but at least I like the work I'm doing.
Parent
What about.. (Score:3, Funny)
Last year's list (Score:5, Informative)
Last Year's List (Score:5, Funny)
In all seriousness, the first posting of last year's list does have some great comments.
Cleaning the monkey cages... (Score:4, Funny)
Even if you don't get bit, the staff dusts you *just to be sure*.
Talk about temp help....
eeeeeeeew (Score:4, Interesting)
job interview out of college (Score:5, Interesting)
The factory tour went something like this:
----
The core technology of the company was a non-contact system that used radiation to penetrate the steel and measure its thickness. Are you cool with radiation and wearing the exposure badge? Sure, not planning on any kids for a while...
Now, this steel is pretty hot, so you've got to be careful not to touch it, ok? Sure.
It's also relatively thin and the edges aren't the smoothest -- so, it's sharp. But it's steel, so it's still heavy. You wouldn't want to get any fingers you're particularily attached to near it. Uh, ok.
And, it's moving out the mill at a fairly fast speed. Radioactive, Semi-molten, sharp and fast. Still ok? uh, yeah, sure.
Finally, for some ungodly reason, it is dripping with acid. We don't know why; that's just part of the manufacturing. That's partly why we go with a non-contact measurement.
Lastly, even though your resume is excellent, we're going to put you on the support team for at least a year. It's low pay, but there's lots of overtime and travel benefits. You'll go to all sorts of exotic mill towns.
----
And that, my friends, is why I took the rocket-scientist job instead.
Work for Bush Administration (Score:5, Funny)
K-25 demolition (Score:4, Informative)
Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)
It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot [childrenof...roject.org] in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building [childrenof...roject.org]. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)
Re:Television Meteorologist (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Television Meteorologist (Score:3, Interesting)
It's no different from being a high-tech fortune-teller. Your crystal ball is replaced by a supercomputer running weather simulations. Your predictions are only as good as the output results. Read up on the "Great Storm of 1987" [stvincent.ac.uk] and Michael Fish, who reassured a concerned view that there was no danger of a severe storm c