[Serious] Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?

[vulcanlogician]

Sure, but, if you see strawmanning (at least on my part), please, point it out.

Not in anything you said directly.  The position attacked in the part of the article you quoted seems sufficiently rare to be ignored.  I've never heard or seen a scientist take that position on philosophy.  If the author is quoting someone, he should say whom.  If not, he's making up a position.

Yeah. I see where you're coming from on the quote. It's a little strawman-ish. Especially considering it's a more poorly-stated version of Polymath's argument. But it does press against some of the things Poly was suggesting. For instance when he asked 

What substantial idea has philosophy (as done by a philosopher, not a specialist in the area of study)  given in the last 200 years that has actually played a role in physics? or chemistry? or biology? or geology?

The article's author gives a pretty good answer to that. (No idea. Nor does philosophy really attempt to pursue such ideas.)

***

I think one problem we're having is giving a clear definition of philosophy for someone to criticize. Poly is right to point out that all abstract or systematic thinking ought not be deemed philosophy. It's unfair to insinuate that because it's obviously not his position that abstract or systematic thinking is bad. So I could see potential strawmanning there too.

A better (but slightly ambiguous) way to define philosophy is "critical thinking about fundamental issues." But that has the problem of including cosmologists and physicists. -shrug- Perhaps there is some overlap in the two fields. Or perhaps "critical thinking about fundamental issues" is too vague to count as a good definition. But it's a decent ballpark definition... up for debate anyway.

"Fundamental issues" isn't so hard to clearly define, anyway, so I think it's an okay working definition.