I get what you’re saying here, but another way to think about it is that “scientist” is a permanent label. I’m not saying I agree with that, exactly, but it’s something to consider.
What about someone who gets a PhD, postdoc, faculty position, publishes a lot, moves up the ranks, tenured, then full professor… but then moves into administration. If she becomes a dean and gives up her lab, is she not a scientist anymore? I think it could be fairly said that she’s earned the label for life because being a scientist is not just about what you do, but what you know and what your expertise is, no? That Dean may still read the journals in her field and attend seminars and conferences, contributing to conversations, if minimally. She may even sit on dissertation committees and things like that. Again, I’m not taking a position (yet), but I would feel very strange saying that she’s not a scientist. Could it be that once you’ve earned the label, you get it for life?
Another example… Ian Tattersall is retired and doesn’t do any lab work anymore, but he publishes about a book a year (mostly in university presses, so scholarly and peer-reviewed) and still writes articles in the peer reviewed literature, mostly commentaries and review articles, but those are scholarly and can have impact, even if they aren’t primary papers. If someone said he wasn’t a scientist anymore, he’d certainly be surprised and probably offended. I’m not sure that someone, once they are a scientist, can ever really stop being one. I might be in the minority on this one, though. Maybe he counts because he’s “active?” But what does active mean?