Scientist in the Star Wars universe

[Bohandas]

One thing to remember is that Star Wars is a Fantasy Setting with SciFi trapings.
That means when you think about the role of a scientist in this Setting, think Fantasy, not SciFi.

As a tangential aside to this, why do you think it is that Star Wars always gets called out on the matter of actually being fantasy rather than science-fiction, but Star Trek rarely gets called out on it despite being even worse in this regard?

Think about it. The number of people with supernatural powers in the original Star Wars trilogy can be counted on one hand (Luke, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Vader, and Palpatine. That's exactly five.), but in Star Trek you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a deity (Apollo, Charile X, The Q, Trelane, the Organians, the Pah-Wraiths, the Wormhole Aliens, etc) or a psychic (Spock, Tuvok, Diana Troy, etc) or a spirit (Trelane, Redjak, etc) or a creature from another plane of existence (The Q, Species 8472, etc.)

EDIT:
Plus let's also not ignore the fact that First Contact was essentially about someone trying to conquer the world with an army of zombies