Now that's an interesting question! Off the top of my head, some occupations where I'd expect that status considerations interfere with the adoption of effective procedures would be:

• Judges -- ultra-high status, near-zero discipline for incompetence.

• Teaching, at all levels -- unrealistically high status (assuming you subscribe to the cynical theories about education being mostly a wasteful signaling effort), fairly weak control for competence, lacking even clear benchmarks of success.

• Research in dubious areas -- similarly, high status coupled with weak incentives for producing sound work instead of junk science.

For example, there are research areas where statistical methods are used to reach "scientific" conclusions by researchers with august academic titles who are however completely stumped by the finer points of statistical inference. In some such areas, hiring a math B.A. to perform a list of routine checks for gross errors in statistics and logic would probably prevent the publication of more junk science than their entire peer review system. Yet I think status considerations would probably conspire against such a solution in many instances.