Worst-jobs.com is a fairly advertising heavy, content light site, but its list of the top 20 worst jobs for men is worth a peek. It includes the vaguely sciencey Zoo keeper (at 15) and Crime Scene Investigator (at 13), before moving into the real science (and medicine) with Lab Technician at number 6 (“you may find yourself looking at a colony of wrigglers waving at you”), Sensory Deprivation Research Subject (at 4), and Mosquito Researcher (“be prepared for a lot of itching”).

The worst job for men though, according to them? Flatulence Analyst (“Ideal for: Graduate students desperate for a good idea for a thesis.”) In 2003, Minneapolis gastroenterologist Michael Levitt, paid two researchers to sniff pinto-bean-inspired farts to see if intestinal health and fart-smell were linked.

Worst-jobs’ worst jobs for women seem far more concerned with sugar and spice and all things nice. With not a whiff of fart (but a whiff of sexism), science jobs are usurped on the worst jobs’ stakes by being a Saint, a seamstress and a fishwife.

Meanwhile, over on Popular Science’s The 10 worst jobs in science 2007, a fair scattering of Forensic Entomologists and Weightlessness researchers battle with (female, btw) Whale-Feces Researchers to claim a spot at the lower end of the list, but ultimately, the top place is taken by a job that men and women alike would surely agree was a tricky one – the Hazmat Diver.

In all of these, the scientists interviewed acknowledge that, though there are some downs, these are more than compensated for by many upsides. Oft-repeated as a benefit is the uniqueness of their work, and the sense of doing something of public value – “I´ve done an awful lot of neat things in my life,” the forensic etymologist says. “But this maggot work and getting the bad guys off the street is the neatest.” But on Popular Science’s 2003 list there’s one science job that’s far from unique, but is, or was at least in 2003, the 10th worst job in science.

The postdoc.