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Worst Jobs In Science
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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"They're grown by the thousands just for the purpose of dying in nasty ways."
Does PETA have a hissy-fit, or are they not cute and fuzzy enough to garner their attention?
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.
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.
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.
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It was definitely a "make you sick" job.
John
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 convert the US, but it will happen and the savings will be huge.
My wife has had a somewhat poor job in science, too. She worked for her Ph.D. by killing rats (by injecting cold salt water to their hearts and chopping their heads off), and sliced their brains to 400 um slices, inserted some rather toxic neuromodulators and measured the responses of the brain slices for long hours. Once her Ph.D. was getting completed, his boss left the university to work in the medical industry, and the research unit was finished -- and she never got her degree, just spent several years killing rats in rather obnoxious way and working with poisoneous chemicals.
-- Imperial units must die --