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 :)

Comments

Re:I love the smell of maggots in the morning...

[Guppy06]

"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?

Re:#10 - Postdoc... oh yes.

[debrain]

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.

Catshit. I can top that.

[MarkRH]

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.

Re:Types of jobs

[plover]

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.