The Worst, Most Torturous, Icky, Painful, Stinky, Dangerous, and Just Plain Horrible Jobs in Science

Ah, science! Ennobling. Fascinating.

Deeply challenging. Also, dangerous, gross and mind-bogglingly boring. We at Popular Science are sometimes brought up short by the realization that there are aspects of science—entire jobs, even—that, when you strip away the imposing titles and advanced degrees, sound at best distasteful and at worst unbearable. Having chosen last month our second annual Brilliant 10—a group of dynamic researchers making remarkable discoveries—we turned to this pressing question: For the rest out there, just how bad can a science job get?

The answer: Really, really bad.

We solicited nominations from more than a thousand working scientists and culled the list for the most noxious. Then we voted. Which is to say, there is absolutely nothing scientific about the ranking of the worst jobs in science that appears on these pages; it is simply the collective opinion of a group of alternately awestruck and disturbed editors who rarely suffer anything worse on the job than keyboard- induced repetitive-motion syndrome.

As happens in science, fundamental assumptions are herein turned on their heads. If you assume, for example, that people employed to supervise fart-smelling research would dislike such work, think again. Ditto Robert Jones, who adores working with flesh-eating beetles to remove every last morsel of decay and make his skeletons truly gleam. Mosquito researcher Helge Zieler says the beauty of the Brazilian rainforest far outweighs the thousands of mosquito bites and the malaria he suffered there. Science is full of inquisitive people who take great pleasure in doing jobs that others would not touch with a 10-foot pole—and the world is indisputably a better place for their efforts. We’re grateful that someone out there is doing these jobs. Even more grateful that it isn’t us.

-William Speed Weed (2003)

Isolation Chamber Tester

“Imagine taking a car trip cross-country with your family. Now imagine that it lasts for months on end, that you can’t open the windows, and that you can never get out of the car.” That’s how Marc Shepanek, NASA’s deputy chief for medicine in extreme environments, once described the psychological challenge astronauts will face on long-distance space missions. But hey, at least they’ll be going somewhere. In the meantime, we put people through the torture in immobile isolation chambers on the ground. At NASA, engineers responsible for life-support systems sign up to spend a few months in cramped captivity to test their equipment—for no additional pay. In one 91-day test at NASA, the crew recycled their urine into drinking water 13 times. But—as Jean-Paul Sartre almost said—forget recycled urine; true hell is other people. In a Russian chamber on New Year’s Eve 1999, Canadian subject Judith La Pierre was pulled into a corner by a burly drunk Russian and kissed—possibly, she said afterward, a prelude to rape. In another incident, a fistfight spattered blood on the chamber walls. Perhaps the worst indignity of all? Most isolation-chamber subjects are would-be astronauts who undergo the torture to buff up their résumés—yet none of NASA’s recent chamber testers has made the astronaut corps.