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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.
Those sound like bad jobs to me ;-)
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
How appropriate =)
s html?tid=127&tid=187&tid=98
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/11/21/1746257.
Odd, "EA Researcher" was nowhere to be found. Oh that's right, they don't have any. They're just an assembly line now.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Computer scientist is a scientist, no?
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Ewww!
#4 is Tampon Squeezer
On the other hand, Tampon Tester would rate as one of the best jobs ever.
*sigh*
Sorry if I grossed someone out.
Vote for a Man, Vote for Bush!
Not a liberatarian flipflop hippie.
to /. trolls ;) http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,209 67,713425,00.html
The bright side? "In 13 years I've only been pooped on twice, and that's not bad." :-|
I love my job.
Sure, you aren't killing puppies for science, but you do spend all day listening to people demanding that you fix their problems like it's your fault. You're usually rated by call time, so actually helping people looks bad on you review.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Don't forget Iragi Weapons Inspector?
The jobs not done until you find at least one.
Food taster for Fear Factor...
The cradle of civilization and agriculture. The first place humans built cities. The birthplace of writing. And--oh, yeah--currently the best place in the world to get yourself kidnapped or killed. For archaeologists, there's no plum like Iraq. Saddam actually let them do their job, and he even protected his country's heritage in museums. But now no archaeologist can work in Iraq until security improves. Meanwhile more than 8,500 treasures have been stolen, and those are just from museums, where artifacts are cataloged.
What truly troubles archaeologists is imagining what's being taken from their dig sites in the field. Archaeologist Francis Deblauwe, who is trying to keep tabs on the looting, knows of more than 30 important digs, including ancient Babylon, that have been despoiled, but he notes that his list is "very preliminary and grossly incomplete." When the researchers do get to go back in, they'll be able to determine which sites have been looted. But they'll never know what's been taken.
Sheesh! And I wonder how many such 'casualities' of war we ignore. Really sad.
War is not just people, it's a whole lot more. And as an amateur archaeologist, I really do feel bad. And these things are irreplaceable.
Vote for a Man, Vote for Bush!
Not a liberatarian flipflop hippie.
I was shocked to see "public school science teacher" on their list. They used a poor example, and yes, that would be a bad job. But there are many good science teachers, and most schools are better than the one they picked out. The article also implies that public-school science teachers are all poor teachers, which is not true. I was shocked to see that (I'm a high school student), and I'm sure many other slashdotters are too.
What about President Bush's Science Advisor? If that job did drive you to drink nothing would.
Anyone find it funny the most common job on there is Nursing? The nursing role has changed from working with patients to Medical Assistants. They hire 10-15 MA's to 1 Nurse in most clinics. And then to top it off, they dont pay the Nurses for the years in school, and hard work, and they get no respect for managing the MA's ontop of normal nurses duties.
What a shame.
In our Internet-based summons for readers to top (bottom?) last year's "Worst Jobs" list, nurses nominated themselves in droves: "Still a no-respect profession. Doctors treat you like slaves." "The pay is substandard for all the training." "Just look at the current shortage." Indeed, the government estimates that we're short 110,000 nurses, and that by 2008 we'll need half a million more.
Numerous studies echo the dissatisfaction of our nurse readers. Nurses are fleeing the profession because of stress, long hours, low pay and lack of advancement opportunities. The cost? A recent University of Pennsylvania study found that surgical patients at hospitals with the worst nurse-staffing levels (ergo the most overworked nurses) have a 31 percent greater chance of dying. If this trend doesn't improve, we might soon find "patient" topping our list.
Some of those were hard just to list.
sigs, as if you care.
How about just grad student? No matter what your research is, you're overworked, underpaid, and then thrust into a saturated job market, where you may never find a tenure track position. And if you do, you'll still be paid a far sight less than any random dick with an MBA.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They should have said "weather desk staffer" at a TV station.... the one who takes the calls after the "great weekend" doesn't materialize. Agree that the on-camera job is actually a pretty good one, and it's in the entertainment industry, not science.
I think you had it wrong - they aren't implying that public school science teachers are poor teachers! It says they have one of the worst jobs, which I believe is true. Not only do they have to teach a subject which requires intelligent thought to a disinterested student body, their profession is constantly under attack by religious radicals.
Hell, my own mother threatened to take me out if they taught me evolution. It didn't happen, but I shudder to think of other students who did have that happen to them.
Also, science is one of the most poorly funded departments across the nation. Hell, team sports such as Football and Soocer, even electives such as music get more funding in some areas.
So yes, they've got one of the worst jobs in science: teaching it to the next generation.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
... a USDA meat-packing plant inspector?
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Dubbya's speechwriter?
Sleep, she is for the weak..
The link mentioned in the previous slashdot article no longer works. Compliments of the WayBackMachine
I have no
In all seriousness, the first posting of last year's list does have some great comments.
It rated only 2 positions below help desk tech, all my science teachers in shool seems to like their jobs.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Your Sig was the worst part.
Help fight continental drift.
Even if you don't get bit, the staff dusts you *just to be sure*.
Talk about temp help....
Yeah, due to your sig I see you really give a shit about the casualties of war.
Picture the puke scene from Team America: World Police and you've got a good idea of HALF of what I just went through.
You, sir, should be kicked off slashdot, post-haste.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I'm not sure I understand why that is one of the worst jobs in science. Reading the article, it seems they were just being belittled and TV weather-forcasting called a "fast-food science."
It's no different from being a high-tech fortune-teller. Your crystal ball is replaced by a supercomputer running weather simulations. Your predictions are only as good as the output results. Read up on the "Great Storm of 1987" and Michael Fish, who reassured a concerned view that there was no danger of a severe storm coming ashore (which obligingly decided to change course).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
here's the poll results... Main site - poll is halfway down on the right.
Energy: time to change the picture.
. . . 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.)
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
What about SCO programers?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Unemployment! But if you still consider your job to be worse than that...
...theres no need to fear, Reverend Sharpton is here! ;-)
Cheers,
Adolfo
I spent one summer screening race horses for drugs... by chemically testing their urine.
Yes, I had the joy of sitting in a lab and handling horse piss for eight hours a day. Let me tell you, the range of colour, texture, and viscosity of the stuff is truly mind-boggling.
The one saving grace? I wasn't the guy that had to collect it from the source.
I heard if you fall in you have to get a ton of shots.
Some links of interest:r bour/cleanup.jsp The Harbour Cleanup Project website.l and_and_Labrador A post on /. wouldn't be complete with a a wikipedia reference.
http://www.ozfm.com/skycam.htm for a live webcame of the downtown core.
http://www.stjohns.ca/cityservices/environment/ha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's,_Newfound
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
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:
----
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.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Please look at talkorigins.org. No legitimate scientist doubts that evolution happens; it's how it happens that gets debated.
'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.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Use your brain and tell me where the fucking dinosaurs are in the bible.
Job 40:15-24, 41:1-34. And before you say that the first is an elephant or a hippopotamus, ask yourself how many of those have tails like cedar trees... (vs17).
I can only imagine the shock his dentist had when she asked him to "Open Wide".
liqbase
"You do realize that over half of Americans reject the standard theories (important word: theories, not laws) [emphasis added] for the origin of life and the universe that are presented in secular science education, don't you?"
Yes, it troubles me greatly, as does your post and far, far too many just like it. The word "theory" in science doesn't mean "half-assed guess" like it does in normal parlance. It means an idea that has been rigorously tested and is supported by a mountain of evidence. Theory of relativity. Theory of gravity. Germ theory. Theory of evolution. All supported by mountains of evidence, all have stood the test of time and are all highly unlikely to go away anytime soon. Sure any one or more of them could be wrong. Some may be able to adapt to new evidence, some might (heavy, very heavy emphasis on might) be relegated to the scrapheap of disproven scientific ideas...like phlogiston or creationism. The latter one is the most troubling. Two hundred years ago the dominant scientific idea in the west was a special creation taking place 6000 years ago. Christian geologists went out looking for this, but instead found evidence incompatible with a young earth, thus refuting young-earth creationism (note: not creation, a supernatural event and thus outside the realm of science. A god or gods could create using any means s/he/it/they deem appropriate and are thus undetectable to naturalistic science). Modern day creation-science and its bastard child "intelligent design" are just attempts to turn back scientific progress over 200 years. So yes, it does bother me a great deal to see that certain well-established scientific theories are thrown out because of the religous ideology of certain groups. Whats worse is that these religious radicals aren't objecting to the science, they're objecting to the implications of established science towards certain literalistic interpretations of the Bible, not science at all. There is one scientifically valid idea about the origin of species currently, and like it or not it is evolution.
What about a science advisor to the Bush Administrator? That's got to be the worst job in science unless you also hold a degree in fair-weather theology.
Hello, I'm a Kansan. You might remember us from such right wing propaganda as "God Hates Fags" or a more recent but ephemeral debate over teaching evolution in our schools. I don't have a dog named Toto, and by my local estimation, pancakes are rather bumpy.
So I'm used to dealing with invective, and even the religious right. A few might be my neighbors. But I reject your hypothesis. "Slightly over 40 percent of Americans" is an extreme interpretation of a stastic of relgious beliefs. My own mother admits she feels the Old Testament to be closer to myth than reality, and generally believes that evolution holds more scientific merit than the newly uprising creationist theory. Some Catholics don't adhere to the abolition of birth control, and I hear some even support abortions. Simply because 40 percent marked down Catholic or Protestant or whatever that number includes doesn't mean they hold belief in common with every other member of the congregation. In fact, I'd say thats downright impossible. Personally, I think that Lamarck had better science than creationism or whatever you call it today; a text cannot be adequate substitute for experimental investigation and observation. And I'm not willing to sign off on ignoring evolutionary theory because its spiritually convinient.
Its debateable whether one can call creationism a theory, and I'm willing to let it into our textbooks, but to exclude evolution is both ridiculus and ignores what is the most plausible theory put forth yet. I think mutual inclusion is perhaps a decent middle grounds to acommodate our individual beliefs.
So when I hear people complain about teaching evolution in the classroom, I say to them: fine, butif you don't want it in the classroom, don't expect your children to attend college. In the suburb where I live, that works reasonably well. In other parts of Kansas, that statement would likely be met with laughter, and likely acceptance of the terms.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Well, in my humble personal world, one of the worst jobs in IT is still working with the sales department to turn their "lie-to-the-customer-a-bit" into something approaching reality.
And guess what; it's an uphill battle. The more lies you make into working software, the more undoable things are expected from your department. But fail once and you're out of a job.
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
Scary as all that sounds, I've actually been on the train ride. It's very pleasant, the rail cars are antiques, and the tour guide's history of Oak Ridge during WWII was interesting. (Checks rad badge again. No problems.)
It's a shame to see the old girl go down, really. She's done a lot in her time in "Happy Valley". K-25 was at one time the world's largest building. (For a sense of scale, have a look at the two-story townhouses at the bottom of the pic. If you look carefully, you'll see that the two buildings in the center are actually just one building.)
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Sure. I'll agree with that. But is that the version "most Americans" consider the literal Word of God? I doubt it because most probably haven't read it. They consider their version the literal Word of God, which is the whole point of my beef with the poster's point: he on his high horse by saying that 40% of Americans believe the Bible to be the Word of God and that it has more weight than science. But if you actually looked at it, 5% probably think its the Hebrew version, 25% think King James, and 10% think NIV. How can "40%" think the Bible is the "literal Word of God" if they can't agree which version is the literal one? Yet science is the one in question. riiiiiiiight.
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Whoa! The National Weather Service has "sunrise" and "sunset" on its web site. I think you should send them an email with the correct information right away! They obviously believe in a geocentric solar system. ;-)
Could anyone tell me exactly how Genesis and the theory of evolution are incompatible?
Yes.
Well, I may be "deluded" to be skeptical of evolutionary science's claims, but no-one has ever accused me of being "not very bright" (not before this post), and I'm certainly not "poorly educated". "Over educated" is more accurate - all thanks to the Australian education system.
I have no problem believing (with a healthy degree of skepticism) the results of experimental science. But the absolute faith in a theory that can't be experimentally tested (and I don't think experiments on a few hundred generations of drosophilia demonstrate a great deal) and which therefore will forever remain unprovable, to me appears ludicrous.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
Okay - I may be misjudging you somewhat, as you haven't made your position completely clear, but I'm assuming you believe in creation "science", or at least that you reject any theories of evolution.
The thing is, I'm not sure how you can claim that evolution hasn't been experimentally tested (and I'm not just talking about fruitflies). There is a fossil record (admittedly incomplete) which indicates the mutability of species over millions of years. In just the case of primates, there's strong indications of a direct line from lemur-like creatures to us, through the great apes. I'm not a biologist, so I don't have reams of facts at my fingertips, or a very deep knowledge of evolution, but I still find it far more believable than the folk-tales of people who (to paraphrase Harry Harrison) didn't even understand the mechanism of a rainbow, because there is _absolutely_ _no_ independant, verifiable evidence of the absolute truth of those fairytales. I'm also pretty sure that there is experimental evidence of evolution (as in: The theory predicts this, but we've not found evidence of it yet. Oh, look, here's that evidence. Notch up another win for Occam's Razor.) but I must admit I'm unable to recall a specific instance. Go and talk to a bioligist. Maybe they'll be able to remember the stuff I can't right now.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
On NRK, one of our national TV channels (Norway), the weather is actually presented by real meteorologists, usually seniors from the Meteorologic Institute, which means it's mostly men well into their forties or more. They are definitively not weather bunnies:)
The knuckles, the horrible knuckles!
(I'm a girl, you know)
I'd have to disagree with the Television Meteorologist listing.
In New England, most local television news weather forecasts are overseen and reported on air by actual meteorologists, unlike other parts of the country that have untrained "weathermen" (like southern california). In smaller TV markets, or weather is much more stable, or even on radio, you might as well read off government supplied weather forecasts.
They are well paid for TV. (however if you are not on TV, meteorologists get shafted in terms of pay, unless they work as consultants -- usually environmental consultants dealing with air quality issues.)
Also, those guys are instant celebrities around these parts.
Snow predictions are one of the harder predictions to make. These guys basically have to choose between various computer model predictions, and sometime they are far off.
However, my recommendation is don't trust a forecast longer than 24 hours in advance.
The way the article defines crank, they might as well have said "the worst job in science is doing science". There's potential for acrimony even in what would seem to be the most obscure, boring and straightforward areas. In a better world, most everyone would be objective about research and results, and reserved in judgement. We would not cling to preconceived notions, and not knowingly squelch unfinished research we don't "like", argue unfairly and fallaciously, apply 3rd degree methods, and use other stupid and dirty tricks in support. We can back down if we can admit we were wrong, and can convince ourselves that wrong != stupid. But too often, when something is researched, we suddenly discover that we have opinions about it, and that our opinions come with baggage. Even on research where we have no stake in the matter and have not troubled to inform themselves even a tiny bit, we've got an opinion. Congressional science advisors and school science teachers are treated much the same as "cranks", except that instead of the opposition being mostly heartfelt and even occasionally fair and rational, the opposition is usually a lot of smoke meant to distract and keep a hidden agenda hidden. But that's the breaks in science. When experimental results are not in agreement with popular thinking, shouldn't go with poll results over scientific results. I trust that improvements will continue and someday, that better world will arrive.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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:
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.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think your problem (and the problem of people thinking like you) is that your fear science or the implications of it. OR that you simply reject some scientific facts because they contradict the words in your bible/quran/whatever.
:-), you rely on your senses. You have to keep that in mind.
:)
People just do not want to be descendants of apes and/or a bag full of various chemicals. Many feel somehow "controlled" by science and flee into pseudoscience, esoterics or religion which forbids reasoning. IMHO very understandable but still VERY stupid and dangerous for society.
First of all, you have to realize that all the people who dig out these facts are also simply such meat bags.
And second, and much more important, there are too many scientists today who mix their opinion with their findings. I think this is one of the major reasons why people get dragged into the silliest of cults.
Examples:
Take a biologist, his/her job may be to find about the evolotunary dependencies between various species (for example), NOT TO endorse social darwinism.
Take a neurologist, his/her job may be to find about some thought processes, NOT to promote enslaving because "it is a scientific fact that noone has a free will".
Of course these examples are exaggerated, but I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say. Also, this list can be further extended.
Both opinions (and they are sadly very widespread) result from silently pouring personal premises into the equations. And telling it in the way "I'm know, because I'm a scientist in that field.".
IMHO, as a scientist, you have to remind yourself that you are describing the "objective" part of reality. Additional to pure philosophy which only uses rational thought (note that I didn't say "brain" here
If I say "time started with the big bang some 13.7 billion of years ago and it doesn't make sense to speak about 'the time before'", I'm extrapolating and interpreting scientific facts with my rational mind and therefore using my senses (or those of other people) to give that answer.
I hear you saying now: But in the end, I can't really be sure that everything works according to the laws of nature, that there is 'really no god'. IMHO you're right.
- And, for some of those atheistic nerds here: It's dishonest to oneself to strongly deny the existence of any GOD but to think OTOH "Maybe I'm just a brain with electrodes connected to it or I'm just a a simulation running on someones computer".
I don't know for sure and maybe I'll never know, but why should I believe -> therefore I'm agnostic( and thinking that I have a free will). Yes, this is probably my own twisted religion. But at least I try to distinguish between reasoning and belief.
I'll try to say it in yet another way: By letting in astrology/religion/... into your *everyday life* and by believing in 'religous facts' which contradict scientific facts(*), you're either
a) denying that your senses give the proper output, so to say
b) abandoning rational thought, i.e. logic reasoning.
---------------
(*) - There are of course, (too) many scientific "theories" which do not deserve that title because they are just called that by the more influental people in the community. And, theories have borders, i.e. newtons law is good enough to describe the motions of the planets around the sun but not a black hole.
But, please, this is not the case with evolution.
As far as religeous texts go, there are more intact (and consistent) greek manuscripts of the Bible than any other religeous book. Yet somehow the Bible gets all the flak because it is/was so widely translated. If you compare the originals to todays 'interpretations' they are definately agreeable enough (and I have compared them) and most of the mistranslations are menial compared to the big picture. The problem is that the vernacular had definitive words for each interpretation while our modern English language interchanges words like crazy.