[yantrams]

I should've phrased it better. I meant masquerading fictional scientists as real scientists.

And yes based on my understanding of science, Newton was a scientist and so were the undocumented pioneers who tinkered with what they had available at the time. Be it the wandering ascetics from India who studied the effects of various herbs on humans to compile treatises on medicine like Ayurveda or the priests and traders from Babylonia who arrived at mathematical results based on heuristic principles, in my worldview, they are all scientists.