Think you've got a lousy job?
Think you've got a lousy job? Try tick dragging
By Charles Leroux
Tribune senior correspondent
Published November 9, 2004
For the second year in a row, William Speed Weed, contributing editor at Popular Science magazine, has had the duty of calling scientists around the world and announcing: "We've determined that you have one of the worst jobs in science."
In a telephone interview, Weed reported that "some get quite indignant. The worm parasitologists [No. 2 on the magazine's Worst Science Jobs II list] were like that. I had to call several before finding one who'd talk."
He found Eric Ottesen of Emory University who noted that, "we can't show pictures or really even talk about these diseases. Society just isn't ready for it."
One worm that no one wants to know intimately is the female Dracunculus medinensis. After migrating from the gut, she settles just under the skin, where she grows to as much as 3 feet long and then lays her eggs.
"When the thousands of babies make their joyous arrival," Weed writes, "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." (That ancient treatment gave rise to the snake-curled-around-a-pole symbol of the medical profession.)
The magazine, now on the stands, attaches little icons to each job on the list, specifying what's so bad. The parasite pros get icons showing a sniffing nose -- standing for "olfactory overload" -- and something in the palm of the hand, meaning "generally disgusting." Other icons include a Grim Reaper, for "risk of death" -- Iraqi archeologist -- a wastebasket, for "futile" -- also Iraqi archeologist.
The job of congressional science fellow, in which some of the brightest young scientists in the country come to Washington to share the truth of science and end up being totally ignored, gets the "futile" icon, plus others for "political quagmire" and "disillusioning."
Most veterinarians choose that career because they love animals. But Colorado State University vet David Neil told Weed, "A very interesting transition takes place if you go into lab work. You go from someone who makes sick animals healthy to someone who makes healthy animals sick."
Research vet, No. 3 on the list, rates icons standing for "career-track bait-and-switch" (a fishhook and an attache case), "disillusioning" (a rain shower) and "heartbreaking" (a puppy).
If you hold Worst Job No. 9 -- assessing the risk of Lyme disease -- you have to trudge through dense forests dragging a white corduroy sheet, stopping after 20 meters to remove hundreds of possibly infected ticks from the sheet and yourself and dropping them in a jar. Then you go another 20 meters, and another, and another. Tick draggers have a trifecta of icons -- one for "physically exhausting," another for "risk of disease" and a third for "poorly compensated."
Then there are the scientists who specialize in sexually transmitted diseases. Two of their number made the list: researchers who study anal warts and those who study vaginal infections (the magazine labels them the "tampon squeezers," referring to what it calls the "optimal specimen-collecting tool").
Next year's list is being planned, with, Weed said, "some sort of surprise. We've got some ideas, but nothing I can talk about."
Meanwhile, the pool of 500 to 600 worst-job nominations acquired over the past two years continues to grow. Some of those are self-nominations. This year, members of four of the 17 professions in the Popular Science list stepped forward to say just how awful their jobs were. Most prominent among them were nurses, No. 10 on the list.
"Doctors treat you like slaves," one wrote. Another said, "The pay is substandard for all the training."
The rest of us should care. Studies show that surgical patients in hospitals with the most overworked nurses have a 31 percent greater chance of dying.
Another profession scientists nominated for the list was science journalist. "I think a lot of times they were just having fun with me," said Weed, who noted he learned science on the job, having been science producer for the daily radio news program, "The Osgood File."
The real scientists said that science journalists miss out on the chance to do real science themselves and are forced to simplify the subjects they cover."Some scientists," Weed said, "especially those who have a unique specialty, like the anal wart researcher [Naomi Jay of the University of California at San Francisco], seem proud of their chosen professions."
Indeed, on last year's list, a group of dysentery researchers, whose job it is to poke around in feces, had T-shirts made with a cartoon of one fly asking another, "Is this stool taken?"
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Popular Science list of worst jobs
1. Anal-wart researcher
2. Worm parasitologist
3. Lab-animal veterinarian
4. Tampon squeezer (STD researcher)
5. Landfill monitor
6. K-25 (Oak Ridge lab) demolition
7. St. John's Harbor (sewage) ecologist
8. Iraqi archaeologist
9. Tick dragger
10. Nurse
11. Computer help-desk tech
12. Congressional science fellow
13. Public school science teacher
14. Nosologist (disease statistician)
15. Root sorter
16. Crank (maverick theorist)
17. TV meteorologist
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
