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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."
I find it interesting that #14 is "Astronaut," considering 1/3 of slashdot users grew up dreaming about that position.
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...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
[...]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).
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 (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.
Sorta falls under Post-Doc but not really.
Why Medical Resident you ask?
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.
Yeah, those are some of the worst jobs in science. I'm sure there are just as many bad jobs in other fields, too.
I have a friend that breeds and shows dogs. She can't neuter them, because that would kill their future value. So when she takes a male dog to a dog show where it's exposed to unspayed female dogs in heat, she has to do the same duty as the barnyard masturbator to make sure the dog doesn't go hump anything. I was somewhat amused when she told me about this, but I'm glad I don't have to do it. (Docuporn title comes to mind: "Uncensored - Backstage at the Dog Show!")
I can imagine some years ago one of the worst jobs in tech (although people didn't necessarily know it) was running cabling through old asbestos-laden buildings. Not healthy at all.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Reportedly, Viagra (Sildanefil) was originally intended to lower blood pressure. They conducted trials, but it didn't work. They discovered the side effects when patients refused to give back leftover pills and even requested more.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I was at Sea World once and I was walking by the Killer Whale pool. There were some trainers feeding and apparently taking blood samples of Shamu and co.
When we saw the show they had played a video on the jumbotron about the program at Sea World and how they've bread more orca than anybody else. They mentioned that every calf was artificially inseminated.
Of course, this begs the obvious question... Where does the, er, sperm com from?
As I was just about the ask one of the trainers, she made a signal to a whale that I gues meant "hey, baby" because the huge male floated on his side and, well, showed his manhood.
The trainer pulled out a padded, 6-inch PVC pipe with handles and proceeded to service the beast. When she was done, she gave the animal a big handful of fish as a "reward". I really wonder how much training they have to go through before the males respond.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.