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

EA Researcher

[Zork the Almighty]

Odd, "EA Researcher" was nowhere to be found. Oh that's right, they don't have any. They're just an assembly line now.

what about...

[BortQ]

- Programmer for EA

Computer scientist is a scientist, no?

Tampon Squeezer

[Temporal Outcast]

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.

Anal wart

[Anonymous Coward]

The bright side? "In 13 years I've only been pooped on twice, and that's not bad." :-|

I love my job.

Go Helpdesk!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

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.

WMD

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Iragi Weapons Inspector?

The jobs not done until you find at least one.

Not as bad as my job...

[Anonymous Coward]

Food taster for Fear Factor...

Bush on "science"

[Anonymous Coward]

What about President Bush's Science Advisor? If that job did drive you to drink nothing would.

Grad student

[Hatta]

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.

What? No...

[mtrisk]

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.

Re:Where is?

[jm91509]

Where is the Slashdot author? Or the Cowboyneal feeder? Or the Slashdot Moderator? Or the Slashdot story submitter?

It said the worst jobs in science. Nothing scientific about this place...

Re:Science teacher?

[Zackbass]

It doesn't matter if you are the best teacher ever to walk the earth, most public schools will have wonder why you waste your time there within months of your first day. No matter how much money the science department gets it can't make a student give a damn. Not only do you have depressing students, but then you have to deal with the school administration when you the parents of the pothead that got a 30 on his chem final call and raise hell.

The opposite is true too. If you have a bunch of interested students you can put together a great class with very few supplies.

Science teacher absolutely deserves to be on the list as long as a large part of our society still sees no value in education.

Last year's list

[quizwedge]

The link mentioned in the previous slashdot article no longer works. Compliments of the WayBackMachine

Re:Consequences of Bush's Iraq War

[cold fjord]

Things are a litte more complex than that little blurb in the article suggests. Saddam's interest in archaeology tended to be self-serving, such has when Saddam rebuilt Babylon:

In 1982, Saddam's workers began reconstructing Babylon's most imposing building, the 600-room palace of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Archaeologists were horrified. Many said that to rebuild on top of ancient artifacts does not preserve history, but disfigures it. The original bricks, which rise two or three feet from the ground, bear ancient inscriptions praising Nebuchadnezzar. Above these, Saddam Hussein's workers laid more than 60-million sand-colored bricks inscribed with the words, "In the era of Saddam Hussein, protector of Iraq, who rebuilt civilization and rebuilt Babylon." The new bricks began to crack after only ten years.

The problems in Iraq aren't new. Many of the problems in Iraq date back to at least Saddams invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War.

Prior to the Persian Gulf War, archaeologists working in Iraq were forced to close down excavations when Iraq's August invasion of Kuwait made the situation to dangerous to continue....

And following the war, looting of archaeological sites increased dramatically as Iraq's impoverished citizens used sometimes desperate means to make money in light of the economic sanctions placed on Iraq by the western world.

Saddam's military made a practice of stationing military units by antiquities to protect them from attack. There are many recorded instances, including these gems:

...In early February 1991, for example, Saddam parked MiG fighter jets at a Babylonian ziggurat at Ur to deter coalition forces from disabling them during the Gulf War. By Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian empire, he built air bases and weapons factories. According to archaeological scholars from the University of Chicago, an 80-foot mound containing many ruins of ancient Nineveh also housed an oil storage tank. During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam used the site for anti-aircraft batteries because it was the most elevated spot in the area....

In contrast, at the height of the bombing campaign the Pentagon produced aerial photographs of the Al-Basrah mosque. They showed clearly that the Iraqis had destroyed the mosque for propaganda purposes. While coalition forces had bombed a target some 100 yards away, leaving the mosque unscathed, Iraqi engineers sliced off the dome in the hope of duping journalists that the U.S. had been responsible for the destruction.

The desecrations of burial grounds in Iraq aren't anything new. They happened to burial groundsafter the first Gulf War too.

The looting of the museums was also overstated as well.

FWIW: In Afghanistan, the Taliban was destroying priceless cultural artifiacts as being anti-Islamic. The US intervention in Afghanistan stopped that, and the new government is committed to preserving such artifacts.

Re:Religious radicals?

[Bowling Moses]

"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.