The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel

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.

Where is?

Where is the Slashdot author? Or the Cowboyneal feeder? Or the Slashdot Moderator? Or the Slashdot story submitter?

Those sound like bad jobs to me ;-)

Re:Where is?

Where is the Slashdot author? Or the Cowboyneal feeder? Or the Slashdot Moderator? Or the Slashdot story submitter?

It said the worst jobs in science. Nothing scientific about this place...

EA Researcher

Odd, "EA Researcher" was nowhere to be found. Oh that's right, they don't have any. They're just an assembly line now.

what about...

- Programmer for EA

Computer scientist is a scientist, no?

Tampon Squeezer

Ewww!

#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

Sorry if I grossed someone out.

Your Sig was the worst part.

Re:Tampon Squeezer

On the other hand, Tampon Tester would rate as one of the best jobs ever.

Nope. Tried it. They taste terrible.

Anal wart

The bright side? "In 13 years I've only been pooped on twice, and that's not bad." :-|

I love my job.

Go Helpdesk!

Sure, you aren't killing puppies for science, but you do spend all day listening to people demanding that you fix their problems like it's your fault. You're usually rated by call time, so actually helping people looks bad on you review.

Re:Go Helpdesk!

Like the article says, don't worry... you won't be employed for long.

WMD

Don't forget Iragi Weapons Inspector?

The jobs not done until you find at least one.

Not as bad as my job...

Food taster for Fear Factor...

Bush on "science"

What about President Bush's Science Advisor? If that job did drive you to drink nothing would.

Nurse is on the list, thats really really BAD!

Anyone find it funny the most common job on there is Nursing? The nursing role has changed from working with patients to Medical Assistants. They hire 10-15 MA's to 1 Nurse in most clinics. And then to top it off, they dont pay the Nurses for the years in school, and hard work, and they get no respect for managing the MA's ontop of normal nurses duties.

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.

Think those are bad?

They are. But what about:

• Forensic proctologist
• Leech veterinarian
• Global warming expert at Shell
• Corporate EMT at Philip-Morris
• Rosanne Barr's gynecologist

Some of those were hard just to list.

Grad student

How about just grad student? No matter what your research is, you're overworked, underpaid, and then thrust into a saturated job market, where you may never find a tenure track position. And if you do, you'll still be paid a far sight less than any random dick with an MBA.

Last year's list

The link mentioned in the previous slashdot article no longer works. Compliments of the WayBackMachine [archive.org]

Last Year's List

We also linked to

last year's list. [slashdot.org]

In fact, it was so good that they linked to it twice [slashdot.org]. No word yet as to when they'll re-run this one.

In all seriousness, the first posting of last year's list does have some great comments.

job interview out of college

I found this neat company that made a system that controlled the thickness of sheet metal was it was being manufacturered. Kinda interesting, I thought... I could apply DSP algorithms and statistics to the problem. Low pass filter, etc...

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.

What? No...

I think you had it wrong - they aren't implying that public school science teachers are poor teachers! It says they have one of the worst jobs, which I believe is true. Not only do they have to teach a subject which requires intelligent thought to a disinterested student body, their profession is constantly under attack by religious radicals.

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.

Re:Religious radicals?

Please look at talkorigins.org. No legitimate scientist doubts that evolution happens; it's how it happens that gets debated.

Re:Religious radicals?

'Religious radicals' is a fair call, except I'd be tempted to add a few more carefully chosen phrases, like 'not very bright', 'deluded', 'ill-informed', and 'poorly educated'. I'm sure you get my drift. I don't believe you've opened your eyes and looked at the real evidence at all, otherwise you'd be convinced that the theories of evolution offer a considerably more likely explanation than do the fairy-tales of a bunch of wandering sheep-herders. It's very sad that more than half the population of the US is in the same boat.

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.

Re:Science teacher?

It doesn't matter if you are the best teacher ever to walk the earth, most public schools will have wonder why you waste your time there within months of your first day. No matter how much money the science department gets it can't make a student give a damn. Not only do you have depressing students, but then you have to deal with the school administration when you the parents of the pothead that got a 30 on his chem final call and raise hell.

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.

Re:Science teacher?

My dad taught science in public high schools for 25 years before quiting. In the last school he worked at, the football team got new uniforms every year, but he was forced to by lab equipment out of his own pocket. He gave a damn about the students, but unfortently he did not have the the support of the administration.

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?

Re:Consequences of Bush's Iraq War

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]:

In 1982, Saddam's workers began reconstructing Babylon's most imposing building, the 600-room palace of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Archaeologists were horrified. Many said that to rebuild on top of ancient artifacts does not preserve history, but disfigures it. The original bricks, which rise two or three feet from the ground, bear ancient inscriptions praising Nebuchadnezzar. Above these, Saddam Hussein's workers laid more than 60-million sand-colored bricks inscribed with the words, "In the era of Saddam Hussein, protector of Iraq, who rebuilt civilization and rebuilt Babylon." The new bricks began to crack after only ten years.

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].

Prior to the Persian Gulf War, archaeologists working in Iraq were forced to close down excavations when Iraq's August invasion of Kuwait made the situation to dangerous to continue....

And following the war, looting of archaeological sites increased dramatically as Iraq's impoverished citizens used sometimes desperate means to make money in light of the economic sanctions placed on Iraq by the western world.

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:

...In early February 1991, for example, Saddam parked MiG fighter jets at a Babylonian ziggurat at Ur to deter coalition forces from disabling them during the Gulf War. By Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian empire, he built air bases and weapons factories. According to archaeological scholars from the University of Chicago, an 80-foot mound containing many ruins of ancient Nineveh also housed an oil storage tank. During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam used the site for anti-aircraft batteries because it was the most elevated spot in the area....

In contrast, at the height of the bombing campaign the Pentagon produced aerial photographs of the Al-Basrah mosque. They showed clearly that the Iraqis had destroyed the mosque for propaganda purposes. While coalition forces had bombed a target some 100 yards away, leaving the mosque unscathed, Iraqi engineers sliced off the dome in the hope of duping journalists that the U.S. had been responsible for the destruction.

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.