alt Hacker NewsVery true and well put, but IMHO that's not a productive definition of "scientist". You're definitely on the side of common usage, but this is one of the many hills I'd die on; all scientists necessarily employ intuitive intellectual tools at some point in their process, so it feels silly to cut out those who primarily use them if they're still productively employing systematic thought.
The upside of this is that Mathematicians get to be scientists, too! The downside is that you also have to let the darn philosophers in ;)
You're basically saying that scientist and "using systematic thought" should be synonymous. Why have two terms for the same thing? Whereas we definitely need a separate term for people who focus on empirical work, since that implies distinct properties of the kind of work. Mathematical and philosophical work simply aren't the same as scientific work, despite the non-zero overlap.
It's almost like there's a reason the common usage is the way it is.