Magazine ranks worst jobs in science
By DAN VOELPEL , THE TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
(SH) - Dr. Denise Galloway has the worst job in science. She just doesn't know it.
"I love what I do," said Galloway, an anal-wart researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
The just-released November issue of Popular Science magazine ranks the worst jobs in science. At the wrong end of the list: anal-wart researcher.
Are you stunned? Or just sickened? Or maybe it's got you thinking about a career change.
If you get squeamish easily, you might want to stop reading right here.
Popular Science ranked its "worst jobs" list based on 19 criteria, including macabre, generally disgusting, involves digestive products, risk of disease, poor compensation and inspires ridicule.
So you can understand how anal warts, which the magazine says can grow to 2 inches, can make the list.
But Galloway and her peers don't just look at blemished derrieres all day.
"The anal region is not the only region we study," Galloway said. "The (human) papillomavirus causes all kinds of genital warts and cervical cancer. I have a job where I get paid to think. I get paid to be creative and study how something's working in a biological system. I think it's challenging and fun."
Galloway, who got her doctorate in 1975 and first started scrutinizing wart-infected body parts in 1979, thinks her misunderstood field gets a bad rap from most folks, including her own mother.
Mom winces when Galloway talks shop. And when people ask Mom what her daughter does for a living, "She tells them I do cancer research. I guess she thinks that sounds much better than saying I study anal warts," Galloway confessed.
For the record, HPV is America's most common sexually transmitted disease and shows up in several forms, according to the American Social Health Association. Galloway said recent advances in research show promising results at preventing cervical cancer and eventually eliminating the need for Pap smears.
If Galloway's area of research doesn't sound like a kick in the pants, Popular Science has some other worst jobs in science for you. Rounding out the magazine's top 10:
2. Worm parasitologist.
These scientists study worm parasites - those little buggers that play havoc with your digestive tract.
"Ascaris lumbricoides eggs," the mag writes, "hatch in the small intestine, then migrate to the lungs; they're coughed up into the mouth and swallowed back into the gut, where each worm will grow as long as 16 inches." Enough already.
3. Lab-animal veterinarian.
Why would someone go to into veterinary medicine to make healthy animals sick instead of sick animals healthy?
C'mon, this can't really be someone's job, can it? Sadly, yes. Australian scientists studying vaginal infections find they get their best specimens by manually squeezing the feminine products rather than from traditional scrapes and urine tests. The saving grace? They use gloves.
5. Landfill monitor.
Poor pay, exposure to cancer-causing dioxins and, oh, yeah, the stench from decades' worth of decomposing trash. At least in the Northwest, landfill monitors don't have to work in the 100-degree-plus temperatures of the Southwest.
6. K-25 demolition worker.
K-25 is the building at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee where scientists made uranium for the first atomic bombs. Demolition duty gets glowing reviews of a different kind.
7. Ecologist at St. John's Harbor in Newfoundland, Canada.
Every day the bay absorbs the equivalent of five Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw sewage - and associated "floatables" - from city sewers.
8. Iraqi archaeologist.
Yes, the archaeologically rich birthplace of civilization resides within the borders of Iraq. But so do maniacal insurgents searching for kidnap victims whose heads they can remove.
9. Tick dragger.
Would you respond to Yale University's help-wanted advertisement asking for someone to drag a giant corduroy sheet through remote forests, then use tweezers to pick off hundreds of Lyme-disease-carrying ticks?
If you want to know what it pays before you answer, you need help. By the way, it pays little more than working at McDonald's.
10. Nurse.
A misprint? No. Nurses - like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say - get no respect. No wonder, Popular Science reports, the United States has a shortage of 110,000 nurses.
:scared :142lmao:
By DAN VOELPEL , THE TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
(SH) - Dr. Denise Galloway has the worst job in science. She just doesn't know it.
"I love what I do," said Galloway, an anal-wart researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
The just-released November issue of Popular Science magazine ranks the worst jobs in science. At the wrong end of the list: anal-wart researcher.
Are you stunned? Or just sickened? Or maybe it's got you thinking about a career change.
If you get squeamish easily, you might want to stop reading right here.
Popular Science ranked its "worst jobs" list based on 19 criteria, including macabre, generally disgusting, involves digestive products, risk of disease, poor compensation and inspires ridicule.
So you can understand how anal warts, which the magazine says can grow to 2 inches, can make the list.
But Galloway and her peers don't just look at blemished derrieres all day.
"The anal region is not the only region we study," Galloway said. "The (human) papillomavirus causes all kinds of genital warts and cervical cancer. I have a job where I get paid to think. I get paid to be creative and study how something's working in a biological system. I think it's challenging and fun."
Galloway, who got her doctorate in 1975 and first started scrutinizing wart-infected body parts in 1979, thinks her misunderstood field gets a bad rap from most folks, including her own mother.
Mom winces when Galloway talks shop. And when people ask Mom what her daughter does for a living, "She tells them I do cancer research. I guess she thinks that sounds much better than saying I study anal warts," Galloway confessed.
For the record, HPV is America's most common sexually transmitted disease and shows up in several forms, according to the American Social Health Association. Galloway said recent advances in research show promising results at preventing cervical cancer and eventually eliminating the need for Pap smears.
If Galloway's area of research doesn't sound like a kick in the pants, Popular Science has some other worst jobs in science for you. Rounding out the magazine's top 10:
2. Worm parasitologist.
These scientists study worm parasites - those little buggers that play havoc with your digestive tract.
"Ascaris lumbricoides eggs," the mag writes, "hatch in the small intestine, then migrate to the lungs; they're coughed up into the mouth and swallowed back into the gut, where each worm will grow as long as 16 inches." Enough already.
3. Lab-animal veterinarian.
Why would someone go to into veterinary medicine to make healthy animals sick instead of sick animals healthy?
C'mon, this can't really be someone's job, can it? Sadly, yes. Australian scientists studying vaginal infections find they get their best specimens by manually squeezing the feminine products rather than from traditional scrapes and urine tests. The saving grace? They use gloves.
5. Landfill monitor.
Poor pay, exposure to cancer-causing dioxins and, oh, yeah, the stench from decades' worth of decomposing trash. At least in the Northwest, landfill monitors don't have to work in the 100-degree-plus temperatures of the Southwest.
6. K-25 demolition worker.
K-25 is the building at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee where scientists made uranium for the first atomic bombs. Demolition duty gets glowing reviews of a different kind.
7. Ecologist at St. John's Harbor in Newfoundland, Canada.
Every day the bay absorbs the equivalent of five Olympic-sized swimming pools of raw sewage - and associated "floatables" - from city sewers.
8. Iraqi archaeologist.
Yes, the archaeologically rich birthplace of civilization resides within the borders of Iraq. But so do maniacal insurgents searching for kidnap victims whose heads they can remove.
9. Tick dragger.
Would you respond to Yale University's help-wanted advertisement asking for someone to drag a giant corduroy sheet through remote forests, then use tweezers to pick off hundreds of Lyme-disease-carrying ticks?
If you want to know what it pays before you answer, you need help. By the way, it pays little more than working at McDonald's.
10. Nurse.
A misprint? No. Nurses - like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say - get no respect. No wonder, Popular Science reports, the United States has a shortage of 110,000 nurses.
:scared :142lmao:
