Here, moving from bad to worse, are Popular Science’s “Worst Jobs in Science” for 2005:
10 Orangutan-Pee Collector. For 11 years, Cheryl Knott, a pioneering anthropologist at Harvard University, has collected urine from primates using a pole with a bag on the end.
9 NASA Ballerina. National Aeronautics and Space Administration robot scientist Vladimir Lumelsky hired a ballerina to dance with a robot he designed to sense astronauts in order to stay out of the way.
8 Do-Gooder. Each year, volunteers help the Earthwatch Institute with scientific expeditions, slogging through peat bogs in Canada where they can study carbon while ducking polar bears and fending off swarms of insects.
7 Semen Washer. At sperm banks around the country, they are known as cryobiologists or laboratory technicians. They collect samples, scrutinize them in microscopes for sperm count, spin the sample in a centrifuge, add a preservative and freeze them.
6 Volcanologist. These guys run toward volcanoes when they erupt. They brave incinerating clouds of dust, sulfur dioxide gas, melted glaciers and lava to get their data. Dozens of them have been killed on the job in the past few decades.
5 Nuclear Weapons Scientist. Classified data storage tapes have gone missing, scientists have been wrongly accused of espionage, and one scientist burned an eye with a laser. Fed-up scientists at the country’s nuclear labs are retiring in droves.
4 Extremophile Excavator. These folks search out microbes thriving in some of the most putrid, nauseating, arsenic-saturated mud on Earth. Researchers extract the bugs in scorching heat, blinding sun reflected off salt-caked lakes and eye-watering gases.
3 Kansas Biology Teacher. Kansas teachers have been urged to teach intelligent design, the notion that the world is too complex to be explained alone by Darwinian evolution. Many scientists believe ID is a new name for creationism, following a literal interpretation of the Bible, and has more to do with religion than science.
2 Manure Inspector. Researchers at the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety dig through manure to see which bacteria are infecting animals to keep them out of the food chain.
1 Human Lab Rat. Last year, an industry-funded study at the University of California at San Diego paid college students $15 an hour to have the nerve agent chloropicrin shot into their eyes and noses.
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