Stop gate-keeping science. Observe, Predict, Test, Repeat. That is science. Kids do science when they watch adults do things. Just because you aren’t sitting in a lab publishing things no one reads doesn’t mean you can’t “do science.”
Words have meaning and when you dilute them down this far the only result is the destruction of communication.
den· tist ˈden-təst : one who is skilled in and licensed to practice the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases, injuries, and malformations of the teeth, jaws, and mouth and who makes and inserts false teeth
Brushing your teeth does not imply you are a dentist.
sci·ence noun 1. the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained. "the world of science and technology"
A child may not be a good scientist, but they observe, experiment and explore their ideas. That sounds like science to me. Observational learning is a very common way scientist begin to understand things.
Replication of the experiment, "verification" of the law, can still be within a largely preliminary side - of the steps that describe behavioural details, patterns over "protocols", without the explanatory side (that which cause understanding, e.g. enabling deduction).
However, to discover something new (not just new to you) does require contact with established knowledge. And if you don't publish, you can't be very sure that it really is "new"; and it does not become part of established knowledge - it has not been discovered.
i.e. the concept of discovering new knowledge means it cannot be done on a desert island.
What OpenAI is doing doesn't even resemble science at all.