Poor, poor lady's taken in by unelected scientist? (5,3)
I believe the answer is:
badly off
'poor' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'poor lady's taken in by unelected scientist?' is the wordplay.
'poor' is an anagram indicator.
'taken in by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'unelected scientist?' becomes 'boff' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'lady' is an anagram of 'adly'.
'adly' going inside 'boff' is 'BADLY-OFF'.
(Other definitions for badly off that I've seen before include "Hard up" , "Poverty-stricken" , "Poor" .)