This is just another title upgrade (first "software engineer" in lieu of lowly "programmer", then "software scientist") that represents a half-baked understanding of the problem, which is that typical business-driven engineering doesn't work well, isn't very challenging, and is enough of an intellectual wasteland that, after 7-10 years, you'll have learned everything worth learning unless you become an elite engineer (e.g. Principal "hermit", thus named because top-1% engineers don't have much company except at a few dozen companies worldwide) or a manager. That all is true. The ghetto of the average line-of-business software engineer is not a place where one can be over 35 and unembarrassed about remaining there.
This said, I think that the "data science" title is silly. It used to mean "what we call machine learning to make it sound more practical and less AI-ish", then it meant "watered down job that occasionally involves running an off-the-shelf regression or clustering algorithm", and then it meant "any job that involves data". I don't hold out higher hopes for "software scientist".
We seem, in this industry, to have given up on restoring integrity to software engineering itself, so that everyone over 30 is strategizing to become some kind of XWP ("X Who Programs") rather than a JAP "Just A Programmer"), as I've discussed at length here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/xwp-vs-jap/ . We are so desperate to establish ourselves as better than "those programmers" who crank out Java classes and can't function without an IDE... and I understand this, because I don't want to be lumped in with them on compensation or autonomy. That said, I find it sad that we haven't managed to sell what we do (solve problems using software) as something with intrinsic integrity.
Because we've been raping the word "scientist" (e.g. "data scientist" for someone who worked with Hadoop once) for half a decade or more (and should really give it back to the people who have the right to use it) I would be more inclined to call myself a software strategist. Career-wise, I'm far past the level of the average engineer, and refuse to do (unless it's my own company, in which case I'll do the most undignified work just because it needs to get done) the sort of jobs that regular "software engineers" do in most companies (e.g. line-of-business Java-mines work) and I don't think of code as where I add value, but rather my knowledge about problem solving in a more general sense. I've probably evolved out of an engineering role (as defined by the business) and into that of a strategist who does some engineering and coding (especially because it can be a lot of fun). Of course, I'm hesitant to write a "software strategist" essay, because I don't want to see that title get mangled either.