What If Data Scientists Had Licenses Like Lawyers? .. then very few "data scientists" positions would remain, most of them would become "data analysts", "software researchers (analysis-focused)" or some other title which does not need licensing.

The author of this article did not seem to think about this too deeply -- the bar exam works because it grants extra privileges to those who passed it; and barber certification works because it is easy to tell barber from non-barber. Neither is the case for data scientists.

IMHO, if one wanted to add regulation in this area, the "working" approach would be to add restrictions first -- like only licensed people can work with personal data.

But then we'd have to worry about cases like "there is a team of 's/w engineers' writing the code and a single licensed person who can only press 'run' button". And fixing that would require even more regulations... which will probably transform the B2C software landscape, and it is not clear if it would be beneficial or not.