When you think of what a scientist does, what do you think of? Unless you know a scientist personally—or are one yourself—you may think of some of the more famous ones, like celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson or TV’s Bill Nye the Science Guy. They make science seem so cool! So hip!

But you may be surprised to learn about some very … let's just say not-so-glamorous aspects of the life of some scientists.

Whale feces researchers

This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: scientists searching the seas for whale feces that they then examine under a microscope.

Take one scientist, for example. Rosalind Rolland, a researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston, uses the fecal matter of right whales to study reproduction and health of individual right whales and to follow trends in the population. In a 2005 study in General and Comparative Endocrinology, Rolland and her colleagues found that fecal matter analysis can determine gender, detect pregnancy and lactation, and assess age at sexual maturity in right whales. A 2006 study in the same journal found that fecal matter could also measure adrenal activity and reproductive condition in right whales. More recently, they found in a 2012 study in Proceedings of Biological Sciences that ship noise increases stress in right whales—all through analyzing whale feces.

It's a smelly job, but Rolland doesn’t seem to think it stinks. (Oh, c'mon, I had to.)

Isolation chamber testers

You're probably thinking this one doesn't sound so bad, right? At least it's less smelly than examining whale poop.

I would be inclined to agree with you … that is, if it weren't for this quote, from NASA's Deputy Chief of Medicine of Extreme Environments: "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."

Yikes!

This is essentially what NASA life-support engineers go through, though, as part of their jobs. They spend a few months at a time in cramped isolation chambers on the ground, recycling their urine into drinking water and dealing with social isolation (and presumably serious cabin fever) in order to better understand what astronauts go through when they're up in space. The eventual goal of these studies is to determine the best ways to solve the issues related to a closed living environment in order to enable efficient long-term stays in space—because the longer the stay, NASA researchers say, the more knowledge can be gained. The findings could also benefit so-called "Earth-bound populations" that experience similar conditions, like Arctic and Antarctic expeditioners or submarine crews.

(Is it just me, or does the term "Earth-bound populations" sound a little like something from a futuristic movie where humans live only on spaceships and remember us primitive folk as being stuck on one planet?)

Biological-supply preparers

At my high school, we dissected frogs, which came sealed in these little containers that looked like frozen meals (you know, the kind with plastic wrap on top that you have to peel off?). Well, it didn't occur to me then, but it's actually somebody's job to prepare those specimens for dissection.

Sometimes the animals are already dead, like in the case of fish sometimes brought in by fishermen or animals that have been euthanized from shelters, but other times the animals have to be killed at the lab facility before being preserved in formaldehyde.

Insects like fleas and cockroaches are preserved in jars of alcohol, but other animals, like pigeons and frogs, are euthanized on site (usually in a CO 2 chamber for the pigeons and immersion in benzicane, a chemical used to treat tooth pain, for the frogs) and then embalmed and injected with colored latex in their arteries to make identification easier for students. The final step is letting the specimens "cure" for a few weeks before being shipped off.

So these scientists have to smell formaldehyde all day, and on top of that, they have to deal with dead animals, day in and day out. I wonder why more kids don't want to be biological-supply preparers when they grow up?

Motion-sickness studiers

A 2014 study in Human Factors found that motion sickness, no matter how mild, causes a person's multitasking ability and overall cognitive performance to decline. This could be important information for, say, the Navy, or emergency responders in any land/air/sea vehicle. But how was this scientifically proven?

In order to conduct the study, scientists asked participants to solve cognitive tests through virtual-reality goggles for an hour while sitting in a special motorized chair that heaves side to side. The goal wasn't to make patients throw up—that wouldn't tell us anything new about queasiness—but rather to make them only mildly ill to determine just how big of an effect motion sickness can have on our cognitive abilities.

I don’t know how much they had to offer participants to agree to this, but I'm pretty sure the answer is not enough. And what if the subject gets more than mildly queasy and loses their lunch all over the scientist's shoes? Yuck.

Y'know, they say if you love your job, you never work a day in your life…