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."
I find it interesting that #14 is "Astronaut," considering 1/3 of slashdot users grew up dreaming about that position.
A first post about barnyard masterbators that is ON TOPIC!
Some are silly, some are sick, some make you angry, and some just flat-out suck, and some of them sound fun
So, it's actually a list of all the science jobs...
but having to answer phones at verisign tomorrow is gonna blow.
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.
Barnyard masturbators, wow, perhaps the SCO execs DO have a future after all ! Thanks, I'll be here all night
2. SCO Unix Grep Boy
3. Microsoft DLL Librarian
4. Commander Taco's Perl Monkey
Feel free to add more...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I'm in my second year of college studying to become a stool-sample analyzer, but after reading the description of the job in this article, it certainly doesn't sound as exciting and glamorous as my high-school guidance counselor made it out to be...
Well, not me, but my old roommate was. He thought this type of job would help him get into med school (it didn't). His biggest complaint was people who turned in tightly-sealed (naturally) peanut-butter jars packed full of the stuff, which would (naturally) decompose producing gas, causing a literal shit-storm when opened. He only needed about a teaspoon-full to do the analysis.
[...]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).
Lab mice.
..but she quit today. It was clinical research on athelete's foot... 10 hour days taking scrapings from people's diseased feet. I guess the boss was a psycho too.
:)
And she's such a princess.. I've seen her freak out after getting a little cat food on her hand.
postdoc should be #1. There are too many things just plain wrong with the system of postdocctoral training in the U.S. A noncomprehensive list follows:
1. Lack of representation. Let's face it, no matter how much lab chiefs (a.k.a. principal investigators, or P.I.s) try to spin the postdoc experience as "training", in reality postdocs are the _labor_ force that gets the actual bench work done. For other young professionals at equivalent level of training and education, postdocs are woefully compensated for their time and effort (although this has slightly improved recently due to increases in NIH fellowship level guidelines). For instance, M.D. fellows in biology research labs get paid significantly more than their Ph.D. counterparts for doing the same work in the lab.
2. Lack of job prospects and career counseling: postdocs are encouraged to spend time in lab to work, work, work. The "goal" is to find faculty positions at research institutions. People with other career goals (teaching positions at primarily undergrad institutions, industry, sales and management) are looked down upon. But in reality, there are hardly any academic positions available for the number of postdocs on the job market any given year. The mentality of the scientific field needs to change greatly to reflect the realities of the job market.
3. Do we reallly *NEED* all these P.I.s? I believe it is high time to reevaluate the P.I. postdoc grad student hierachy. In reality, most of the labor work in labs could be served much more efficiently if senior Ph.D. level scientists held non-tenure track positions as perrmanent staff instead of temporary postdocs. From talking with friends in the scientific field in various institutions around the U.S., some universities appear to be cautiously moving towards this trend. However, I feel that there needs to be a major momentum shift in this direction. The reality is, we don't NEED that many P.I.s with independent research projects running, and there is an overabundance of postdocs with graduate schools churning out more and more each year (grad students are another source of lab labor and grad school administrators are under constant pressure to recruit and support more and more students for the faculty to explo^H^H^H^H^H train). Research universities should realize that permanent staff scientists will work more efficiently in familiar surroundings and colleagues, and without the pressure of having to look for jobs in 3-4 years in an increasingly tight job market.
4. No clear definition of the mentor-postdoc relationship: basically, your mentor makes or breaks your career. About the only thing you can make complaints on your mentor is sexual harassment. In all other regards of your postdoc training, you are essentially at your P.I.'s mercy. If you have a personality clash with him/her, they can screw you big time. If you have a personality clash with someone else in the lab and they get along better with the P.I., you can get screwed big time. If your experimental results , even if they are indisputably correct, do not jive with their pet theories, they can decide not to publish your work, and you get screwed big time. Heck, they can turn out to be simply assholes, and you are screwed big time. The bottom line is, they answer to no one but their grant reviewers, who are not particularly concerned with postdoc welfare. While most departments have scientific advisory boards and undergo yearly reviews, those reviews are scientitfic in nature and do not really address personnel issues. It is my understanding in most professional fields (law, medicine, etc.) there are standards of behavior that are upheld by professional organizations (state bar, medical review board, etc.). There is no such accountability with regards to personnel, especially postdocs, in science.
blah, too tired to rant now.
NO CARRIER
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)
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.
If it pays 80k or more a year, I'll sign up to crank the wank. Though, I'm not sure I would want to add that to my resume' in the future.
Life is not for the lazy.
I have actually read Miklos Nyiszli's account of being sent to the concentration camp, being selected by Mengele as his assistant and the work that he did.
It involved a lot more than autopsies on the people experimented on. I think that the two worst parts of his job were
1: Selecting Jews with physical deformities, having them killed and then boiling off the meat from their bones so that their skeletons could be put into a museum to prove Ayrian superiority - all the while arranging that the emprisoned didn't eat the stew.
2: Doing the autopsies on the remains of the Zonderkommando that rebelled and who were taken into the woods and flamethrowered to death.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
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.
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'm surprised the previous post of this story didn't make an impression on CoyboyNeal!
Job #4 on the list is "Slashdot Dupe Checker"
...I have to wholeheartedly agree with their icon choice for "psychological torture." There are some things you can learn to block out - Barney is not one of them.
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!
I live in amsterdam and I reckon this guy should have got a mention...
Of course it's not a scientific job, but it still rates a mention.
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.
Perhaps a quick glance at SPR.org will enlighten you as to what some people who are raped in prison go in for.
I've been testing an anti-glaucoma medication for 5 years, all out of pocket. Damn, I need a grant.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You sir, are the relativist. Rape is wrong. Period.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
Before I read the article, I thought this was Barney from Half-Life...you know, the guard. That made sense, because he doesn't seem like a very good guard, and he probably would just overlook prison rape.
Too bad they didn't use him, it would have made more sense for me at least.
No reason to lie.
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 \.
Wrongly jailing people is always a potential problem but it certainly does not detract my lack of feeling bad for the vast majority of people who are in prison.
Yes, the institutionalized rape of innocent people is a "potential problem". So is the rape of people who are not innocent but committed a crime for which not even you could justify rape as punishment. Too bad the prison rapists don't ask everyone "are you innocent?" first.
But apparently you think rape is the correct punishment for the vast majority of people in prison. So having a bag of dope is worth repeated ass rape?
I dunno, I'm no doctor but I'm willing to bet that being violently raped a few times in prison would certainly help reverse some of that irreversible brain chemistry.
Easy to bet on something you know nothing about when it isn't your ass, isn't it? I'm willing to bet that you getting gang-raped day after day for a month would change your mind about whether this is something we should be allowing to happen in our prisons, but I'm not going advocate it.
If for nothing else I am certain that it would make some of these rapists think twice about what they're doing. Yes they have these urges but after being the victim of their own crime they very well might decide to try harder to resist the urges.
Why are ignorance and certainty found together so often? As the post you replied to already pointed out -- many already are victims. Being victims is why they become perpetrators, but genius tzanger wants to do this to more people. Like bombing a civilian populace to get rid of terrorists; how well do you really think this is going to work? But if you're so keen on it, why wait until prison? Why not rape them when they show up in the juvenile home after Daddy gets sent up the river so you can "fix" them before they commit any crime? Half the time they end up in prison from there anyway. You can call it "early prevention".
I tend to agree but as I get older and see more and more bullshit babying and coddling of the convicted and worrying more about them than their victims I tend to start thinking that these people deserve some of their own medicine.
Oh, right. "Hey, they get cable TV! The only way to balance out this amazing luxury is with repeated anal rape!"
But frankly, with people like you advocating sexual torture as a deterrent, I think the worrying about the convicted is justified.
While a murderer is certainly not a rapist is certainly not an arms trafficker, prison rape is brutal enough to sway people's consciences and not normally deadly.
Because brutalizing people always make them become nicer, happier people. But you're right! I can't see how being violated and then having the authorities do nothing about it and an apathetic populace say "you deserved it" would not change one's conscience. It's just not going to change in the way you think.
Yes, I am an asshole.
No you're not. "Asshole" is the guy who takes up three spots at Java Noodles at lunch with his Ford Excursion. You, my friend, are a sick fuck.
The enemies of Democracy are