The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel

flyingtoaster writes "For the second year in a row, Popular Science published their annual countdown of the worst jobs in science. This year's list includes Anal-Wart Researcher, Iraqi Archaeologist and Landfill Monitor. And you think your job's bad?" We also linked to last year's list.

Comments

Re:Go Helpdesk!

[DogDude]

Like the article says, don't worry... you won't be employed for long.

eeeeeeeew

[humuhumunukunukuapu']

. . . the female Dracunculus medinensis migrates from the gut to a point just under the skin of, say, a leg, where she then commences growth to a length of as great as three feet, and where, ultimately, she lays her eggs. When the thousands of babies make their joyous arrival, they blister the skin and pop through, leaving Mom behind. The traditional way to get rid of her is to wrap her head around a stick and twist very slowly--one turn of the stick per day--for weeks or months, depending on how long she is. (This treatment is so old that it inspired the ancient snake-and-pole aesculapius symbol of medicine.)

job interview out of college

[morcheeba]

I found this neat company that made a system that controlled the thickness of sheet metal was it was being manufacturered. Kinda interesting, I thought... I could apply DSP algorithms and statistics to the problem. Low pass filter, etc...

The factory tour went something like this:
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The core technology of the company was a non-contact system that used radiation to penetrate the steel and measure its thickness. Are you cool with radiation and wearing the exposure badge? Sure, not planning on any kids for a while...

Now, this steel is pretty hot, so you've got to be careful not to touch it, ok? Sure.

It's also relatively thin and the edges aren't the smoothest -- so, it's sharp. But it's steel, so it's still heavy. You wouldn't want to get any fingers you're particularily attached to near it. Uh, ok.

And, it's moving out the mill at a fairly fast speed. Radioactive, Semi-molten, sharp and fast. Still ok? uh, yeah, sure.

Finally, for some ungodly reason, it is dripping with acid. We don't know why; that's just part of the manufacturing. That's partly why we go with a non-contact measurement.

Lastly, even though your resume is excellent, we're going to put you on the support team for at least a year. It's low pay, but there's lots of overtime and travel benefits. You'll go to all sorts of exotic mill towns.
----

And that, my friends, is why I took the rocket-scientist job instead.

Re:Religious radicals?

[Bush Pig]

'Religious radicals' is a fair call, except I'd be tempted to add a few more carefully chosen phrases, like 'not very bright', 'deluded', 'ill-informed', and 'poorly educated'. I'm sure you get my drift. I don't believe you've opened your eyes and looked at the real evidence at all, otherwise you'd be convinced that the theories of evolution offer a considerably more likely explanation than do the fairy-tales of a bunch of wandering sheep-herders. It's very sad that more than half the population of the US is in the same boat.

I'm just thankful we don't have too many of these people in Australia, although the number is growing, largely because, I suspect, science education is poorly funded here too.

Re:Religious radicals?

[smooth wombat]

Its debateable whether one can call creationism a theory,

No, it's not debatable whether one can call creationism a theory because it's not. Let's start with the deifinition of a theory:

A well tested (as opposed to a hypothesis which is less well tested) explanation for observed events. A theory must allow one to make predictions which can be tested by experiment. When the results of those experiments are as predicted, it lends support to the theory as a good explanation. If the results are not as predicted, they may lead to the eventual modification of the theory, or even its replacement.

Since creationism/intelligent design relies on a supreme being to start the whole thing rolling, a being which can neither be proven nor disproven, the arguments for these concepts fall flat. Without being able to verify or deny any part of ones thoughts (I refuse to call them theories) you cannot have a theory. End of story.

One can argue until they're blue in the face about how their evidence shows they're thoughts are just as plausible as someone elses but unless/until they can offer proof of a supreme being their ideas are relegated to the same pile as Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.

Next thing you know people will want to believe that the Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old and was made by the flood during Noahs time. Oh wait, that's already being done.

Well at least the fact that humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time is still a safe subject. Er, maybe not.