These arguments relate little, if at all, to the business problem at hand and tend to devolve into pedantic arguments of semantics.
There you have the pedantic mind of the jurist, who fixes on a rigid legal term and goes on applying it unchanged when changed conditions have made it applicable no longer.
Several researchers have since emphasized to me that, while R might be statistical rather than scientific in some pedantic sense, it's so important that it deserves prompt attention.
Reading in a pedantic way may turn you into a bookworm or a bookcase, and has long been opposed.