The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel 336
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.
Go Helpdesk! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Science teacher? (Score:3, Insightful)
Grad student (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Television Meteorologist (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.
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.
Re:Grad student (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Grad student (Score:3, Insightful)
All of that said, it is still one of the coolest jobs in the world to get paid to learn and discover new things. That I would not trade for any MBA position sitting at a desk managing other folks who are actually getting something tangible accomplished.
Re:ARRRRRRRRRRGH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Go Helpdesk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats easy!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers,
Adolfo
Re:Where is? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:1, Insightful)
People need to be maligned and impugned when they are wrong.
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.
Working with sales... (Score:3, Insightful)
And guess what; it's an uphill battle. The more lies you make into working software, the more undoable things are expected from your department. But fail once and you're out of a job.
The list has "Scientist". They call it "Crank". (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Religious radicals? (Score:3, Insightful)
People just do not want to be descendants of apes and/or a bag full of various chemicals. Many feel somehow "controlled" by science and flee into pseudoscience, esoterics or religion which forbids reasoning. IMHO very understandable but still VERY stupid and dangerous for society.
First of all, you have to realize that all the people who dig out these facts are also simply such meat bags.
And second, and much more important, there are too many scientists today who mix their opinion with their findings. I think this is one of the major reasons why people get dragged into the silliest of cults.
Examples:
Take a biologist, his/her job may be to find about the evolotunary dependencies between various species (for example), NOT TO endorse social darwinism.
Take a neurologist, his/her job may be to find about some thought processes, NOT to promote enslaving because "it is a scientific fact that noone has a free will".
Of course these examples are exaggerated, but I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say. Also, this list can be further extended.
Both opinions (and they are sadly very widespread) result from silently pouring personal premises into the equations. And telling it in the way "I'm know, because I'm a scientist in that field.".
IMHO, as a scientist, you have to remind yourself that you are describing the "objective" part of reality. Additional to pure philosophy which only uses rational thought (note that I didn't say "brain" here
If I say "time started with the big bang some 13.7 billion of years ago and it doesn't make sense to speak about 'the time before'", I'm extrapolating and interpreting scientific facts with my rational mind and therefore using my senses (or those of other people) to give that answer.
I hear you saying now: But in the end, I can't really be sure that everything works according to the laws of nature, that there is 'really no god'. IMHO you're right.
- And, for some of those atheistic nerds here: It's dishonest to oneself to strongly deny the existence of any GOD but to think OTOH "Maybe I'm just a brain with electrodes connected to it or I'm just a a simulation running on someones computer".
I don't know for sure and maybe I'll never know, but why should I believe -> therefore I'm agnostic( and thinking that I have a free will). Yes, this is probably my own twisted religion. But at least I try to distinguish between reasoning and belief.
I'll try to say it in yet another way: By letting in astrology/religion/... into your *everyday life* and by believing in 'religous facts' which contradict scientific facts(*), you're either
a) denying that your senses give the proper output, so to say
b) abandoning rational thought, i.e. logic reasoning.
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(*) - There are of course, (too) many scientific "theories" which do not deserve that title because they are just called that by the more influental people in the community. And, theories have borders, i.e. newtons law is good enough to describe the motions of the planets around the sun but not a black hole.
But, please, this is not the case with evolution.