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The Worst Jobs in Science
unassimilatible writes "Popular Science is running a story on the most noxious jobs in science, including, fart-sniffer, barnyard masturbator, and prison-rape researcher, and my personal favorite, the pre-med student who ate, drank, and breathed the blood, urine and vomit of yellow-fever victims. So before you complain about your tech job, check out the list. Things could always be worse."
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.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
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.
I wish that some of the accounts offered by victims of prison-rape--particularly those that caused the students so much anxiety--were made public.
Maybe then we'd see less people here (and elsewhere) resorting to sick and degrading humor whenever the subject comes up.
And check out the pictogram they chose to accompany the prison-rape researcher entry in this story. It's a picture of Barney. I know they're using it as a way of depicting which of the jobs are associated with psychological torture, but, c'mon! Barney? Prison-rape? That's just soooo wrong.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I swear, there have been more dupes in the past few months. At least this one is 2 months old.
and I shall make a new frontend to slashdot. one that is screened by people who actually read slashdot content -- or at least the front page summary -- and hides dupes. a url matcher could also help. perhaps it could also generate a "dupe report card" for the article posters.
(I'd need some serious bandwidth, though.)
geez, come slashdot. perhaps you could give your "article preview subscribers" a big DUPE button to click to save yourself from embarrassment time and time again.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
a) I don't live in california
b) I'm not defending californian criminals, I'm criticizing right wing extremists that believe that once you commit a crime, your rights as a human being should be taken away. But wait, who am I kidding, you guys have Guantanamo bay goin' on... ahhh. nevermind.
That is a dangerous assumption. There have been a number of cases of so called voluntary confessions which turned out to be (usually police-)induced false confessions; this makes one wonder how many cases of false confessions were never revealed to be so. One example is discussed here. Also see here for more pointers.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
And why is that? Because our wonderfully accurate intelligence has pegged him as the mastermind behind 9/11? The same crack team of analysts who brought us the "Iraq is developing a huge WMD program" info? It's easy to bring up Osama because it triggers such a violent response in all of us, myself included. However, I submit to you that Osama and the 9/11 event is really just a larger version of what I was saying before: we'll never know 100% if he was responsible or not.
Anyhow, I'm not going to expend an awful lot of effort trying to defend that bastard. I'm just pointing out that making exceptions for special cases is pretty dangerous. Sure, there are some people who I'd like to see endure torture for the rest of their lives. But it's important to realize that such thoughts are not rational and while they might be amusing little fantasies for us to play in our heads, that's really where they should stay.
GMD
watch this
What's wrong with that is that it costs over $70,000 a year per inmate of tax payer money to keep someone in jail who had a bag of pot of some other stupid thing.
Jail should not serve as 'punishment.' Jails should be there to keep dangerous poeple (muderers, rapists, etc.) away from us. Other criminals (drugs, shoplifters, white collar, etc.) (most people in jail are drug related, btw) should have to repay society by picking up garbage, or washing police cars or something, AND have to take care of themselves, too. Having to work for the state every weekend for a year for no pay would be a good deterrent AND help our aching budgets.
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
if reading accounts of prisoners' rape incident is considered awful an awful experience, how about experience of the victims themselves who endure the real horror of the incident.
likewise, anyone who's ever had a diarrhea and the intense discomfort of it will appreciate that those who analyze stool samples, albeit it doesn't seem a glamorous job, are doing valuable work.
I don't think such jobs are awful; they probably are full of opportunities for job satisfaction. At least in knowing that you're doing something that might help others. It's way better than being a tech worker slaving to enrich some capitalists.