Are today's "data scientists" really just software devs who have specialized in digging around in data and using various data mining algorithms with only a supe

Are today's "data scientists" really just software devs who have specialized in digging around in data and using various data mining algorithms with only a superficial understanding of their inner workings? Ideally, no. We're witnessing an overuse of the name "data scientist" (which has its own problems, but that's another story). There's a non-trivial difference between a data scientist who understands the theory used for the EM algorithm or belief propagation, and a "data scientist" who is performing large-scale data analysis using various data mining tools. Unfortunately, they're both getting lumped together. To become one of the former, you need graduate-level maths, CS, and statistics, while this certificate caters to the latter.