It's not really about the article, but a bit of a rant.

I'm a bit surprised that it's a yet another article on the topic of "who and when we can call a scientist" that does not mention Sadi Carnot (the one of Carnot's Engine fame). His work in monograph Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (find me a title that sounds more badass! ;P) has been described[1] as one of the first that possessed all of the things that we now take as granted in a proper scientific publication:

- Introduction to the problem and settling on certain 'stipulations' and setting a paradigm for further reasoning.

- Mathematical model followed by using it along with real data.

- Replicable description of the experiment that can be used to verify the hypothesis.

- Conclusions and remarks on the implications of putting theory into practice (Carnot already was recognising that We should not expect to utilise in practice all the motive power of combustibles).

- Bibliography and references.

And all of that before the word scientist was even used for the first time, as francopoli pointed out in his post on this topic.

[1]: In case you find yourself thinking 'citation needed', I'm near certain that it was from at least one of the following:

- History of Physics by A.K. Wróblewski (here is his website for the course of the same name)

- Physicists Look Back: Studies in the History of Physics

- Editor's notes in second edition of (translated to English) Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire

I'll update with any extra details when I'll find something more concrete.