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It's funny. Laugh. Science

Worst Jobs In Science 340

Posted by timothy from the and-shove-it dept.
FortKnox writes "Popular science has the worst jobs in science. Some are silly, some are sick, some make you angry, and some just flat-out suck." And some of them sound fun :)
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Worst Jobs In Science More

Worst Jobs In Science

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  • Astro-what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:26PM (#6971067)
    I find it interesting that #14 is "Astronaut," considering 1/3 of slashdot users [slashdot.org] grew up dreaming about that position.
    • It's one of the few jobs that doesn't involve killing animals, though I'm sure such an act is somehow entailed in it.

      • Re:yeah (Score:5, Funny)

        by acxr is wasted ( 653126 ) * on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:41PM (#6971221)
        Actually, the humans have it much worse than the monkeys ever did. From the article:

        "Thagard also had the distinction of being the first person ever to clean out animal cages in orbit, on the Spacelab 3 in 1985. Engineers promised him that the cages would be at negative pressure, so none of the weightless waste of 24 rats and 2 squirrel monkeys would escape. But when Thagard opened the cages, air rushed outward, leading to a frantic floating-feces chase scene."

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:28PM (#6971083)
    A first post about barnyard masterbators that is ON TOPIC!

  • #8 --ouch! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:29PM (#6971102)
    Prison Rape Researcher?!

    Hope there's not too much "hands-on" experience involved with that.....the scientific method could really start to be a "pain in the ass..."

    • Re:#8 --ouch! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Skyshadow ( 508 )
      I worry mostly about the Barney-the-Dinosaur looking icon they have next to the job...

      • Re:#8 --ouch! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fucksl4shd0t ( 630000 )

        I worry mostly about the Barney-the-Dinosaur looking icon they have next to the job...

        I didn't find it at all ironic that Barney-the-Dinosaur was used to symbolize emotional trauma.

        Of course, my kids still don't understand why I hate their little talking Barney so. I threw that thing across the room one day when it started singin "I love you, you love me" and my wife yelled at me. Guess I need a little Anger Management.

    • "Sir, what exactly does 'having your salad tossed' mean?"

  • Types of jobs (Score:5, Funny)

    by pcbob ( 67069 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:30PM (#6971110) Homepage
    Some are silly, some are sick, some make you angry, and some just flat-out suck, and some of them sound fun

    So, it's actually a list of all the science jobs...

    • Re:Types of jobs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by plover ( 150551 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:22PM (#6971519) Homepage Journal
      Actually, a friend had what I thought was the worst job in science. On her first day on the job she was assigned to autopsy the brains of deer, elk, and other large mammals to see if they carried BSE. The hunters and the meat packers who took the animals dutifully put the heads in plastic sacks, and sent them to her lab. The workload was so high that by the time she actually got to them, most had been rotting for weeks.

      It was definitely a "make you sick" job.

      • Golly. Makes you wonder why there isn't a device that can make meat cold, so it lasts longer.

        • Re:Types of jobs (Score:4, Informative)

          by plover ( 150551 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @08:51AM (#6974179) Homepage Journal
          Not a big hunter, are you? Do you usually keep very large waste parts of animals in your freezer? Waste parts that would occupy space that would otherwise be holding the meat you do plan to eat?

          Anyway, we already have such a device. Here in Minnesota, it's called "outside". But our thermostat isn't very well regulated, and the regulator we do have is tied to a 24 hour cycle, causing the temperatures to swing wildly. Carcasses eventually spoil under these conditions.

          There are no government-meat-locker-vans, standing by the woods just waiting to take away the freshly decapitated heads of deer. The DNR doesn't have walk-in freezers available to hold the thousands of heads they need to autopsy. And even if they thought about it in these times of budget crises, why would they? Onerous refrigeration requirements, outlandish electrical bills, all just to make my friend's job a little less disgusting?

  • Not really a science related job (Score:5, Funny)

    by cryptonix ( 163498 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:32PM (#6971130)
    but having to answer phones at verisign tomorrow is gonna blow.

  • Who got the dogs off? (Score:3, Funny)

    by 00RUSS ( 549125 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:32PM (#6971133) Homepage
    Barnyard Masturbator doesnt seem like that bad of a job. Im sure it wouldnt be alot of fun, but I can think of worse things then getting a elephant off. Running windows for one, thats not really a science, more of an art.
    • Don't encourage the goatse.cx trolls, please

    • Re:Who got the dogs off? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      , but I can think of worse things then getting a elephant off...

      Err, probably depends on how it gets it's jollies, if it has a rimjob fetish, I would say you're in a whole world of trouble.

      By the way, why don't I have a fat, ugly people fetish? Life would be so much easier that way.
    • A mate of mine was studying Agriculture Science at University, and for whatever reason they were involved in the collection of pig sperm. So here's my mate, on his haunches holding a container of sorts (I believe the animal is riding a man-made pig's rear), and just before the pig lets the cheese fly, a fellow student knocks the container to the ground. The pig lets rip with what he termed "a staggering amount of spunk" all over his face. My memory is hazy as to this guy's post-blow relationship with the fe

  • I love the smell of maggots in the morning... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Verteiron ( 224042 ) * on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:32PM (#6971135) Homepage
    My sister-in-law works with the US Dept. of Agriculture. Her job consists primarily of zapping fruitfly maggots/larva with everything from lasers to 5000w microwaves. She also boils them, crushes them, melts them with acids, dessicates them with silica flakes then blows them away with huge fans.. you name it. Anything that can be done to kill the little doofers, she does. In bulk. They're grown by the thousands just for the purpose of dying in nasty ways.

    I think the whole point is to figure out ways to remove them from crops without damaging the crops or using pesticides. She likes her job, though. The only problem is that burning fruitfly maggots smell not entirely unlike barbecue or popcorn, so she invariably leaves the lab hungry...
  • the worst job of all is the guy that has to find out what's in the person stool sample.

  • I think... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grey3 ( 160961 )
    the worst job would not be the one doing the disecting, but the one being disected. It would suck having yur ass poked and prodded at by some sharp knife, all the while being pinned to some table and not being able to move.

  • And you thought YOUR job sucked... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:35PM (#6971169) Homepage Journal
    [thefunnypage.com]
    And you thought YOUR job sucked...

  • Cheap shot (Score:5, Funny)

    by da_anarchist ( 548175 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:37PM (#6971179)
    Barnyard masturbators, wow, perhaps the SCO execs DO have a future after all ! Thanks, I'll be here all night

  • No Kidding (Score:3, Funny)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:38PM (#6971196)
    Electroejaculation generally requires anesthetizing the animal

    So what did they do with Mr. Ed?

  • All the jobs on one page (Score:5, Informative)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:41PM (#6971214)

    Here's the printable page [clickability.com].

    Hee hee, barnyard masturbator...

  • Steve [apple.com] Jobs [apple.com]

    Just kidding- hey at least there's a link for you to open in a new tab.

  • Worst Computer Sciences Jobs... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:42PM (#6971225)
    1. RIAA Download Snitch

    2. SCO Unix Grep Boy

    3. Microsoft DLL Librarian

    4. Commander Taco's Perl Monkey

    Feel free to add more...

  • #10 - Postdoc... oh yes. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by No Such Agency ( 136681 ) <abmackay&gmail,com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:45PM (#6971242)
    I have a M.Sc. I'm under 30, with no family yet. I see lots of my elders, with ~4-5 years more post-grad education and subsequent lab experience than me, making THE SAME $$ THAT I DO. Now, while this isn't a problem for ME, it's really bad for them. Post-doc'ing has devolved from a training ground for future tenure-track academics to being slave labor with a possible carrot dangled years in your future. There is less tenure-track hiring these days due to budgetary constraints, and a glut of existing faculty who are not very close to retirement. so the odds of any one of these hardworking, bitter and impoverished post-docs "finishing their training" are pretty small. But in the meantime, hey, there's lots of work to be done, for somebody else's research program, for a tech's salary (but not a tech's 9-5 hours: most post-docs keep grad student hours and are around much more than 40 h/week!). So what if your spouse has to work in another city doing THEIR post-doc, so what if you can't afford a car? Boy, that Ph.D. sure paid off!
    • Yep, that's why I got the Ph.D. in physics, then went into the wonderful world of IT. I'm making the same money now that I was in grad school... nothing. I want a job... :-(

    • Re:#10 - Postdoc... oh yes. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by debrain ( 29228 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:53PM (#6971302) Journal
      You raise a good point.

      There is the option for Ph.D's to come to Canada. Almost all our baby-boomer faculty retire in the next 10 years. It probably won't pay so well as the USA, but there are quite a few intangible benefits, like social services and less violent crime.

      You should be able to work here under NAFTA, with an M.Sc. or Ph.D. Not that you may want to, but it is an option, in a slightly out-of-sync economy.
      • I *am* in Canada, Guelph ON to be exact. I hope you're right about the boomer faculty, otherwise it'll get worse before it gets better... But you are right, a salary goes a lot farther when you don't have to buy health insurance. And there's lots of cool research going on in Canada. But post-docs are still peons.

    • Re:#10 - Postdoc... oh yes. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:11PM (#6971436) Homepage Journal
      Post-doc'ing has devolved from a training ground for future tenure-track academics to being slave labor with a possible carrot dangled years in your future.

      This, unfortunately is true. However, speaking as someone who is starting their post-doc, I can tell you that the money is significantly better than it is as a grad-student. As for the budgetary constraints, yeah, unless you are in defense right now, funding is not going to be as easy at least until W. is voted out of office.

      On the positive side, if you can find a post-doc where they will let you run your own show (i.e. you go into a post-doc with your own ideas, rather than simply serving as someone elses labor fodder), then things can be rather different. Additionally, the NIH post doctoral funding does not preclude you from getting additional funding or $$'s from consulting or from your own business. (VC funding is starting to look up for biotech).

      As for the hours, yeah. Science is hard dude, what were you expecting? So I guess you need to ask yourself why you are interested? There are other intangibles, but if you are simply interested in making money, go sell cars or something. I will tell you though, that making money and science are not mutually exclusive. I was able to make out quite nicely with a couple of small inexpensive databases, a couple of SGI's and a hired computational chemist for one years investment and I know of a number of individuals who are doing quite nicely. My neighbor is a VP at a biotech company (Ph.D.) and he is doing quite well, two of the Ph.D's at his company are driving Ferrari's, one of my dissertation committee members has co-founded a biotech company and is making wine in his spare time, my Ph.D. mentor has his own biotech company, etc...etc...etc... It just takes some (harder) work, a little insight, some luck, a focus on what you want to do and a really good idea of your target market.

      • The Hours (Score:3, Insightful)

        by No Such Agency ( 136681 )
        "As for the hours, yeah. Science is hard dude, what were you expecting? So I guess you need to ask yourself why you are interested?"

        Well, personally, grad school taught me that working long hours is usually pointless (as the evening wears on you become less productive) and that to be honest, I'm not the sort of person who gets serious jollies from being in the lab. I can enjoy the work but only if it's balanced with time to socialize, rest and relax. Otherwise it becomes a grim grind, bitter and joyless.

  • overdone one (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 )
    What about the dude who smells people's armpits to test deodorant? I know it's overdone, but it's surely not overrated...
  • A day later, at the other end of the craft, commander Bob Overmeyer was accosted by a truant turd.

    Need I say more?

  • I think I've changed my mind (Score:5, Funny)

    by christopherfinke ( 608750 ) <chris@efinke.com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:46PM (#6971254) Homepage Journal
    I'm in my second year of college studying to become a stool-sample analyzer, but after reading the description of the job in this article, it certainly doesn't sound as exciting and glamorous as my high-school guidance counselor made it out to be...

  • Beef stroganoff (Score:3, Funny)

    by kalel666 ( 587116 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:46PM (#6971256)
    I had a friend who worked at Plimoth Plantation in the animal husbandry program. He was actually an actor, and had played Governor Bradford for quite awhile, but was bored with it, and wanted to try something different.

    So his first day in the new job comes and goes, and I call him to see how it went.
    "Not so good", he says.
    Why not? I ask.
    "I had to draw the bull today" he tells me with loathing. Draw the bull? WTF? What's so bad about that? And what does art have to do with animal husbandry/
    Not "draw" he tells me.... Draw the bull... you know...

    There's a moral somewhere to that story, something about choosing between Governor and stroking off a large animal, but I'm not quite seeing it.

    Maybe Gray Davis can enlighten me.

  • I love the icons (Score:5, Funny)

    by hitzroth ( 60178 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:47PM (#6971263)
    Isn't it cute that Barney the purple dinosaur doubles as "psychological torture" and mimes as "inspires hatred"? It's just so, counter-counter-culture.

    But what the hell is depicted in the "physical torture" icon?

    And does anyone know if there's a drug with the nickname "William"? The article's author would probably like to know.

  • hamster masturbation (Score:4, Funny)

    by QEDog ( 610238 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:48PM (#6971267)
    I met this guy that for a summer was doing some sort of biological research that, among other tasks, had to masturbate hamsters as part of his job. In words of Minsc from Baldur's Gate 2:

    Every hamster has his day!

  • I was a teenage stool-sample analyzer (Score:5, Funny)

    by neveu ( 184512 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:50PM (#6971281)
    Well, not me, but my old roommate was. He thought this type of job would help him get into med school (it didn't). His biggest complaint was people who turned in tightly-sealed (naturally) peanut-butter jars packed full of the stuff, which would (naturally) decompose producing gas, causing a literal shit-storm when opened. He only needed about a teaspoon-full to do the analysis.

  • Normal Science (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dupper ( 470576 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:51PM (#6971290) Journal
    18. FUSION RESEARCHER

    [...]Post has devoted 50 years of his life to achieving this critical point, called breakeven, and it's still up to 20 years away--"and always will be," [...]

    (Disclaimer: IANAS, please correct me if your know better) It's a little something called a normal career in science. How many lifetimes have and will be spent searching for a cure for cancer? There's a decent chance that many current theories in physics (such as string theory) may be wrong, and this will only be discovered after many lifetimes of lost work. How is this any different from many other types of scientific research or theory? Fusion research is not, presumably, just redoing the same experiment over and over with different variable values, it's (again, presumably) like any other type of research (even historical, economic, etc.), with new developments and theories, constantly changing and having nothing to do with farts, shit or 'milking' large, male land mammals, especially those named 'Tyrone' (RTFA, #8).

    • Re:Normal Science (Score:3, Interesting)

      by more ( 452266 )
      I agree so completely with you on the issue of the fusion researcher. Luckily, the writer understood to list "science journalist" before that - perhaps it was not all irony. IMHO, Fusion research is just about the best job in science.

      Another important job listed in there that will eventually lead to savings of billions per annum is the metric system advocate. However, I do not consider that a science job, it is a political job to comply with international agreements. It may take another 100 years to conve

    • Re:Normal Science (Score:3, Interesting)

      by krysith ( 648105 )
      Dammit, we made the list!

      IUTBAFR (I Used to be a Fusion Researcher), and frankly, I never felt it was even close to the worst job in science. But I always worried about becoming a Richard Post. You see, fusion research is full of old-timers who've been working on it since Project Sherwood days, who have always been thinking "just a few more years and we'll have it". I suppose it's kind of like being a Red Sox fan. When they started work on Fusion for Peace in the 50's, it was 20-30 years away. When I
  • I'll use number 8 on the list as an opportunity to highlight a serious social problem.

    Number 8 Prison Rape Researcher: University of South Dakota psychologist Cindy Struckman- Johnson was one of the first to seek anonymous written narrative testimonies from prisoners about the realities of prison life, and she employed a handful of students to help process the returned surveys. What she got stunned them all: One in ten inmates in the survey had been the victim of a sexual assault, many repeatedly. But i

  • Worst job in science... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Negative Response ( 650136 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:53PM (#6971308)
    Lab mice.

  • My sister had the worst job in science... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @10:55PM (#6971325)
    ..but she quit today. It was clinical research on athelete's foot... 10 hour days taking scrapings from people's diseased feet. I guess the boss was a psycho too.

    And she's such a princess.. I've seen her freak out after getting a little cat food on her hand. :)

  • Catshit. I can top that. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarkRH ( 629597 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:05PM (#6971394) Homepage
    When I was in high school I worked in the Clorox R&D center in Pleasanton, CA. Clorox makes (among other things) bleach, Hidden Valley Ranch (hint: it doesn't start out white) and Fresh Step kitty litter.

    I was in AP Chemistry at the time, and I had a friend whose mother worked at Clorox. I volunteered to work there as part of a work study program for credit.

    Of course, the only way to test and improve kitty litter is to test it with actual kitty byproducts. Both solid and liquid. I can fondly remember the days of placing stir bars in liters of cat urine to mix them up, then pipette-ing samples to coat the litter.

    And, of course, there was only one way to test its effectiveness--lean in and take a hearty whiff. Yes, of kitty poo, as well. The labs' job was to come up with combinations of surfactactants and clays that would, ideally, eliminate the smell altogether, or at least replace it with a pleasant smell. We even had "a professional nose" who would come in and sniff the samples, assigning each sample with descriptions like "kiwi" or "slight fruity scent".

    To be quite honest, however, it was pretty fascinating. Not smelling cat feces, of course. But when you think about it, it's one of the few products that must satisfy the sensitivities of two species, including the sense of smell, as well as the cat's sense of touch. It must absorb odor as well as liquid; clump, and surround the kitty waste; and not disintegrate into too mush dust. Oh, and it also has to be biodegradable.

    I was sold.

    I signed up for a (paid) internship during the summer and made big money. And I always washed my hands before dinner.

  • #10 is postdoc? (Score:5, Informative)

    by myc ( 105406 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:07PM (#6971398)
    postdoc should be #1. There are too many things just plain wrong with the system of postdocctoral training in the U.S. A noncomprehensive list follows:

    1. Lack of representation. Let's face it, no matter how much lab chiefs (a.k.a. principal investigators, or P.I.s) try to spin the postdoc experience as "training", in reality postdocs are the _labor_ force that gets the actual bench work done. For other young professionals at equivalent level of training and education, postdocs are woefully compensated for their time and effort (although this has slightly improved recently due to increases in NIH fellowship level guidelines). For instance, M.D. fellows in biology research labs get paid significantly more than their Ph.D. counterparts for doing the same work in the lab.

    2. Lack of job prospects and career counseling: postdocs are encouraged to spend time in lab to work, work, work. The "goal" is to find faculty positions at research institutions. People with other career goals (teaching positions at primarily undergrad institutions, industry, sales and management) are looked down upon. But in reality, there are hardly any academic positions available for the number of postdocs on the job market any given year. The mentality of the scientific field needs to change greatly to reflect the realities of the job market.

    3. Do we reallly *NEED* all these P.I.s? I believe it is high time to reevaluate the P.I. postdoc grad student hierachy. In reality, most of the labor work in labs could be served much more efficiently if senior Ph.D. level scientists held non-tenure track positions as perrmanent staff instead of temporary postdocs. From talking with friends in the scientific field in various institutions around the U.S., some universities appear to be cautiously moving towards this trend. However, I feel that there needs to be a major momentum shift in this direction. The reality is, we don't NEED that many P.I.s with independent research projects running, and there is an overabundance of postdocs with graduate schools churning out more and more each year (grad students are another source of lab labor and grad school administrators are under constant pressure to recruit and support more and more students for the faculty to explo^H^H^H^H^H train). Research universities should realize that permanent staff scientists will work more efficiently in familiar surroundings and colleagues, and without the pressure of having to look for jobs in 3-4 years in an increasingly tight job market.

    4. No clear definition of the mentor-postdoc relationship: basically, your mentor makes or breaks your career. About the only thing you can make complaints on your mentor is sexual harassment. In all other regards of your postdoc training, you are essentially at your P.I.'s mercy. If you have a personality clash with him/her, they can screw you big time. If you have a personality clash with someone else in the lab and they get along better with the P.I., you can get screwed big time. If your experimental results , even if they are indisputably correct, do not jive with their pet theories, they can decide not to publish your work, and you get screwed big time. Heck, they can turn out to be simply assholes, and you are screwed big time. The bottom line is, they answer to no one but their grant reviewers, who are not particularly concerned with postdoc welfare. While most departments have scientific advisory boards and undergo yearly reviews, those reviews are scientitfic in nature and do not really address personnel issues. It is my understanding in most professional fields (law, medicine, etc.) there are standards of behavior that are upheld by professional organizations (state bar, medical review board, etc.). There is no such accountability with regards to personnel, especially postdocs, in science.

    blah, too tired to rant now.

    • Re:#10 is postdoc? (Score:3, Informative)

      by smoondog ( 85133 )
      While your points are correct, I find that many (including myself) really enjoyed their postdoc experiences. It is alot like graduate school without the deadlines. It is up to you to succeed. There is no pressure, at least in my experience, generally my only drive to get up in the morning is imposed by me. BTW - I think it is clear that this was written by someone bitter about being a postdoc, because the other items on the list are (mostly) bogus.

      -Sean

    • Re:#10 is postdoc? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by frankmu ( 68782 )
      i agree with you... that's why i got out and went to med school instead. now i earn almost as much as a plumber (per hour). Residency sucked big time though. i got paid less than minimum wage to get yelled at everyday.

  • I would have to agree with no. 16... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheWhaleShark ( 414271 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:09PM (#6971414) Journal
    That is, U.S. Stem Cell Researcher. I like that they threw that little bit of political commentary into the mix by highlighting the current abysmal state of stem cell research in the U.S., which was entirely caused by Bush.

    Maybe one day someone will wake up and let us use more than one of the 11 existing viable cell lines. I hope so; I wouldn't want to get my Ph.D. to find that I won't be doing anything with it.
  • nuff said.

  • postdoc! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:16PM (#6971477)
    my sister-in-law actually was a barnyard ejaculator. there's more to that job than they mention. apparently, the other side of the equation, checking for pregnancies involves putting on an arm glove and shoving your entire arm up a cow's rectum. she had this nice circular bruise a couple inches below her shoulder for several days after that...

    my personal worst job was a during a wonderful "research project" involving a lake. we needed to install some "anchors" at the bottom of the lake (metal sign posts with chains attached to them). The lake, actually was a recharge basin [ocwd.com] (the one pictured there), which was routinely drained and cleaned. First cautionary sign: Although they allow fishing, they allow no bodily contact, because the water is essentially treated wastewater, mixed with whatever surface runoff they can gather. They wouldn't let us dive in the water, for fear of our health.

    So they drained the lake one week, and as such things go, they did NOT remove the fish. So now we have a "dry" lake with hundreds of dead fish at the bottom. And by dry, I mean a 2 foot thick layer of muck (and where do all the toxins in a slowly draining body of water go? that's right, down into the mud). So I have to walk down the side of the lake and along the lake bottom, through the fishes (which were somewhat plowed under by the earth movers), dragging a chain. Said chain had a hook attached to it with some bailing wire.

    Luckily, it was a nice bright, warm southern california day (and the fish had had almost a week to really get nice and ripe). Several times my boots would get stuck in the mud from the suction and my feet would almost come out of them as I tried to extricate myself. Eventually I get to the spot and start reeling in the chain. When I get to the end of the, by now quite dirty, chain I brilliantly scratched my hand on the bailing wire. Wasn't too deep, but it did draw blood.

    Just stood there for a while, thinking "well, that's it. i'm going to lose my arm, now. I wonder how long it takes for gangrene to really set in?" luckily a tetanus shot prevented anything major from happening.

    • Re:postdoc! (Score:5, Funny)

      by ElectricRook ( 264648 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @02:35AM (#6972700)
      I've done that AI thing too. When you get your arm in up to the elbow, first the cow decides to sit down. When you get past that, and stick the "french gun" (accidentally) into her bladder, she responds by hopping the back feet around, almost stepping on your feet, meanwhile she is pissing a few gallons of hot urine straight onto your body. If she settles down, and you get your hand onto the vagina, and the gun into the 7" long cervix. Then rectal tract starts squeezing it feels like that cow is standing on your forearm. Then the rectal muscles squeeze out a fountain of bright green.... Which of course fills both your sleeve, and the pockets of you cover-alls. And here in sunny CA, it's 90F and your arm is in 105F cow, and you've been pissed on, shit upon, probabally kick, butted, pinched into a bar of the squeeze, stabbed through the fingers with a syringe of cow vaccine, rope burned, struggled to get a downer back on her feet before she get paralysis. But it's still better than an IT job, even a UNIX sys-admin, I'd go back in a heart-beat. But it does not really pay the bills.

  • Hmm.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by softspokenrevolution ( 644206 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:20PM (#6971507) Journal
    I dont' know, about four hours ago we had a Proff that was telling us about her research into some random gene (nhlh2 or something) and how the Grads got to watch the resulatant mice Knockout and Wild Type mice sit around and either have or not have sex for two hours.

    On top of that they were genetically engineering the poor mice to have low energy levels and small genitals, forever making them the fat and unattractive ones (the mice).

    • Re:Hmm.... (Score:3, Funny)

      by CySurflex ( 564206 )
      On top of that they were genetically engineering the poor mice to have low energy levels and small genitals, forever making them the fat and unattractive ones (the mice).

      Now all we need to do is the genetic opposite, package it in a pill, and sell it during late night infomercials.

      "The Penigizer will not only make your manhood larger, it will energize you! And if you call within the next 10 minutes we'll include the handy-stich portable sewing machine!"

  • Pre-med student Stubbins Ffirth (1784-1820) ate, drank, and breathed the blood, urine and vomit of yellow-fever victims (he also dropped the fluids into his eyes and worked them into cuts on his skin). He didn't get sick -- the patients were in a late, uncontagious stage -- so he erroneously decided the disease's cause lurked elsewhere.

    From the worst hall of fame. [popsci.com]

    Now who would even think of doing such things????

  • Crap Blender (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BitchHead ( 464271 )
    I work in a diagnostics lab that deals with enteric parasites for one of its mainstay products. The in-house testing is done with fecal samples that are from known positive or negative individuals. The samples must be homogenized in a diluent before they are used with the kit. It is one person's unfortunate job to request, and process the samples into a 2 litre specimen master lot. It involves asking our in-house negative patient to crap in a collection container and bring it back to the lab, then takin

  • Mengele's assistant (Score:5, Informative)

    by Azahar ( 113797 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @11:52PM (#6971739)
    I have actually read Miklos Nyiszli's account of being sent to the concentration camp, being selected by Mengele as his assistant and the work that he did.

    It involved a lot more than autopsies on the people experimented on. I think that the two worst parts of his job were
    1: Selecting Jews with physical deformities, having them killed and then boiling off the meat from their bones so that their skeletons could be put into a museum to prove Ayrian superiority - all the while arranging that the emprisoned didn't eat the stew.
    2: Doing the autopsies on the remains of the Zonderkommando that rebelled and who were taken into the woods and flamethrowered to death.

  • Worst Job in MEdical Science (Score:3, Funny)

    by schnits0r ( 633893 ) <nathannd@@@sasktel...net> on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @12:44AM (#6972105) Homepage Journal
    The persons who tested out preparation A, B, C, D, E, F and G

  • Beheading rats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @02:04AM (#6972558) Homepage Journal

    We got to chatting about bad jobs at work a few years ago. There were some doozies (orderly at an asylum, cleaning out cement trucks), but the most memorable was beheading rats.

    One of my coworkers, when he was in college, worker for a research project in the biology department (I believe that was the department). They were doing research on rats. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall that it involved cutting part of some organ out, exposing them to potential carcinogens, waiting a while for the organ to regrow, then examining the organ for cancer.

    The highlight was killing the rats for the final examination. Apparently there was a little rat guillotine. My coworkers said that the first few rats were easy, but after that the rats started smelling the blood and would panic.

  • They left one off (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @02:50AM (#6972752)
    Medical Resident

    Sorta falls under Post-Doc but not really.

    Why Medical Resident you ask?
    • 110+ hour weeks (despite a rule limiting hours ostensibly to 80)
    • Up for 36 straight hours every 4th night for 3-7 years
    • Shitty pay compared with amount of work and with no adjustment by area (~$35,000/year)
    • Faculty hazing
    • Tons of scut work because the government pays your salary instead of the hospital
    • Short vacation scheduled a year in advance with time for board exams and sick time taken out of it
    • Frequently resident doctors have crushing ($150,000+) debt to pay off (note paltry salary above)
    • Several thousand dollars for board examinations on top of shitty pay and lots of loans


    If you are thinking of becoming a doctor and can imagine yourself doing something else, do it. Frankly the lifestyle sucks for the 10 years until you finish med school + residency and for many specialties it still blows once you are done. I have enormous respect for doctors because they've earned every penny they make.

  • Human rights data coding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by avante ( 524777 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @05:38AM (#6973337) Homepage

    I think one of the worst jobs in science might be the people who have to code data for large scale human rights projects such as the on going work at the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconcilliation commission. Imagine that it's just like the prison rape researcher job, only not only are you constantly reading about rape, you also are faces with murder, child rape, mutilations, amputations, child soldiers, dissapearance, theft and torture (very very creative torture).

    People who work on these projects enter a state where they become strongly sympathetic to what they are reading and begin to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

    That's assuming there are no photographic records to review (which is usually kept as far away from coders as possible).

    Although helping to expose the truth about attrocities is rewarding, it's not a very good job.

  • Bad Job Icons on Resumes (Score:3, Funny)

    by billtom ( 126004 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @09:05AM (#6974323)
    I like the little icons that they use to categorize the jobs in the story. I think that we should adopt a standard of using those icons on our resume job listings. Then the interviewer can see at a glance that your last job involved futility and psychological torture.

  • Condom Taster (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @09:58AM (#6974792)
    I'm going AC on this one ;)
    I used to work in the MIS department of London International Group (now Seaton Scholl) who make all sorts of rubber products, including Durex condoms.
    It was one MAN's job to taste the flavoured condoms from the production lines every 30 minutes.
    He seemed a bit worried that a 2:1 from Cambridge in Biology only got him this far. Still, you have to laugh.

  • Give'em what they deserve (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pmz ( 462998 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2003 @11:38AM (#6975805) Homepage
    One in ten inmates in the survey had been the victim of a sexual assault, many repeatedly.

    Yeah, those pot pushers and tax evaders had it coming. Give'em what they deserve. </sarcasm>

    BTW, someone recently had an "insightful" comment about the eye-for-an-eye reasonable punishment as described in the bible. Doesn't the prison system violate this idea of proportionality?

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