Welcome to the Department.
The Distressed Scientists Department is an experimental notebook observing the art, architecture, ache, and absurdity of doing science in the 21st century. Enter a living collection of essays, case studies, and reverent marginalia that explores scientific progress and the future of R&D.
My name is Jolie, I was an about-to-be neuroscience PhD student. You can find me on X and LinkedIn, or send me a message on Substack DMs and joliegcy@gmail.com.
Entry 000 - The Opening Note.
There has never been a more chaotic time to be a scientist, let alone a young scientist.
Ironically, I’m writing this on a rainy Saturday afternoon, at a cafe sandwiched near a famous university, just a few miles north of Boston…no, not in Somerville, a bit more to the east…
It seems so cozy, but the truth is anything but. As I’m writing, I’m seeing people’s newsfeeds refresh; the words visa and funding are every fifth word. People laugh, not from humour, but to dissuade anxiety. Just hope it passes. Hope things change before they get to you. The mood in the science community right now is uncertainty wrapped in performance.
But this isn’t just about recent chaos. It is much more sinister.
There’s been a slower-burning form of takeover and control. It’s been seeping into the pores of research and innovation for the last few decades. Lengthening PhDs. Grant applications that take more time than the science itself. NIH funding that once flowed at age 35 now comes at 45. By the time you do get support, you’re encouraged to double down on what’s already proven. Not what’s novel. Not what’s wild. What is publishable.
This risk aversion is growing. It’s the reason we are publishing more and discovering less. We’re running laps around the same ideas, dressing up replications as breakthroughs. Science is becoming more expensive, but not more valuable.
What happened to discovery? To trial and error? To questioning everything? Are these not the principles that we as academics, researchers, innovators, and scientists have dedicated our craft to?
We forgot that science is play. It begins with wonder, yet we are losing just that.
We are monsters of our own creation; doctors of our own demise. Since the 1970s, post-Cold War institutions have taught us to chase citations, h-indexes, and increasingly narrow specializations. Peer review, once a tool, became a gate. The goal of science shifted from understanding the world to optimizing for tenure. The best people are dealt two cards — conform or leave.
They are leaving.
This is not theoretical. To anybody who has cared enough to read this far, the blaring warning light that should be going off in your head is that we are losing young talent, fast. At the time of writing (May 2025), dozens of my closest friends — young scientists and researchers from MIT, Harvard, and BU — have walked away from academia: some by circumstance, most by choice. Some work for companies. Some are building startups. Many are burnt out. We’re losing talent, not just from underrepresented countries and systems with fewer resources, but from the institutions with the most to lose. Young people are disenchanted, choosing to abandon a seemingly endless spiral of bureaucracy and scientific unfreedom.
In some ways, I’m doing the same, walking a narrow interstice, giving research an ultimatum of my own. I declined to start my PhD this year, because I’ve lost faith in a system that rewards credentials more than creativity, and stability more than discovery.
I’m giving myself some time not to step away, but to step differently. To try and contribute, in some small way, to an ecosystem I can believe in. The Departmet is part experiment, part offering: a way to begin rebuilding trust in research, and to ask what else science could become. I know I’m not the first to ask. I may be naive. But asking questions, even small ones, can open new directions.
Oh — if you were expecting an “about me”: I’m a new graduate who studied neuroscience, global health, and politics in Toronto and Cambridge. I’ve been on the founding team of a predictive consumer analytics company, conducted epidemiology research, and made films (research translation and short-form content). My focus now is crafting spaces to explore how we fund, value, and share ideas. More on www.joliegan.com if curiosity strikes.
What This Is
The Department is a living body. It’s a notebook. A lab. A playground. A dispatch from the frontlines of what’s broken in science — and what is still beautiful.
It’s composed of multiple entries spanning multiple media (with more to come), starting with:
The Logbook – essay-style reflections on the structures, philosophies, and frictions of modern science
The Paper Trail – annotations and reverent reading of foundational books and papers that have been formative (to myself, my peers, and the R&D community)
The Dossier (coming soon) – deep dives into labs, people, ideas, and models, past and present — what worked, what didn’t, and why it matters.
The writing here is shaped not just by science, but inspired by a myriad of content, from PubMed to historical fiction novels to the Beatles. You’ll find references to research papers and film scenes in the same vein. We study science not for prestige, but because we are human.
This space is a starting point — a foundation for new forms of media. Nothing is set in stone: all I know is it will revolve around science and storytelling. The only certainty is evolution.
Core Values
Science is not a product. It is a process, an act of curiosity, and an art.
We make room for the unfinished. The uncertain. The in-process. Not everything here will be neat.
Beauty matters. Form and function are not at odds — storytelling can be sacred, and interfaces can inspire. Create a beautiful interactive experience with the fine balance of content and consistency.
Confluence creates progress. Art, science, and the humanities are not separate domains. They coexist within each person, they can coexist in public. Pay homage to not just the scientists and researchers that came before, but to artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creators because they are just as formative. Think the Renaissance.
Hold science fiction closer to ‘science’ than ‘fiction.’ Many ideas once mocked as “impossible” now shape our world. Infinite possibilities are, well, possible.
Acknowledgements
It takes more than a village. These are people, teams, works, and everything else that have been formative to my thinking for the last few years, those that have and will shape the evolution of the Department for the foreseeable future, and I reference often.
In no particular order, and growing.
Writers, Substacks & Science Communicators
Dwarkesh Patel – The Dwarkesh Podcast
Cleo Abram – Huge If True
Matt Clancy – New Things Under the Sun
Ashlee Vance - Core Memory
Michael Nielsen
Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen
Packy McCormick – Not Boring
Jason Crawford – Roots of Progress
Nadia Asparouhova
CatGPT
Stuart Buck – Good Science Project
Jackson Dahl – Dialectic
Stephen Ango
Adam Marblestone
Dr. Hasok Chang
Dr. John Vervaeke – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
Katherine Boyle
Donald Braben
Vannevar Bush
Hank & John Green – SciShow, CrashCourse, Complexly
Kevin Kelly – WIRED
Peter Leyden - The Great Progression
Tomás Pueyo - Uncharted Territories
Saloni Dattani - Scientific Discovery
Institutions
(some ancestral, some alive)
The Analogue Group (hello, team!)
Open Philanthropy
Stripe Press
Works in Progress
Asimov Press
Convergent Research
E11 Bio
X (The Moonshot Factory)
Xerox PARC
Nokia Bell Labs
BP Venture Research
Stochastic Labs
Speculative Technologies
Santa Fe Institute
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Freethink
The Atlantic
NBER Working Papers
Bluesky
Other Beautiful Things
Cultural anchors
The Dead Poets Society
Babel by R.F. Kuang
The Thinking Game
A24
Blue Skies Research
