Slashdot Mirror
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.
Same here. Aren't most of the people in there for drug offences, not violent crime? Violent anal rape every day for ten years is a pretty harsh punishment for getting caught with a bag of pot.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I don't feel sorry for the murderers, rapists, and child molesters.
I know I'm gonna get flamed for this...
First of all, even when someone is convicted of one of these crimes we never know with 100% certainty that the guy really is guilty. There have been a few rape convictions that have been overturned in recent years based on DNA testing that proved the poor shmuck who spent the last 10 years in jail getting gangraped every day was innocent all along. Do you feel sorry for that particular 'rapist'?
As far as child molesters go, I think it's fairly well accepted at this point that many of these people were victims of child molestation themselves. The early abuse caused irreperable changes in their brain chemistry which made them more likely to commit deviant acts. Obviously, we need these freaks off the street since they can never be rehabilitated. But I'm not sure that sentencing them to a lifetime of being raped is really the right thing to do.
There is a reason we have the clause "unusual punishment" in our legal system. Our rehabilitation system thinks it's pretty clever by not performing the abuse themselves but turning a blind eye when prisoners do it to each other. But prison rape is something that no prisoner should have to endure, regardless of what crime they were convicted of.
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.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.