What is "scientific" about a magnet ?

The development of new magnetic materials is more engineering than science.

The science is in the study of the magnetic field, and how it interacts with everything else in the universe.

In fact, the first scientific paper was written about magnets.

This paper was written in the year 1269 by "Petrus Peregrinus" (Pierre de Maricourt) in a letter to his friend. In this paper, the writer summed up his lifetime of research into magnets. He also described the invention of the modern compass, a new astrolabe design, and a magnet powered motor.
He described how to magnetize steel, how to identify the poles of a magnet, how magnets will attract and repel each other, and other properties of lodestones and magnetized steel. He used spherical lodestones that he called Terellas "little Earths"

This letter was published, and translated into several languages, including English in the year 1271.

And then the plague arrived in Western Europe, and progress ground to a halt for more than 300 years. In the year 1600 William Gilbert, who had studied the published letters of Petrius Perigrinus de Maricourt, wrote the first intentional scientific book. It also was on the properties of the magnet, but it also included descriptions of the Earth's magnetic field, and similarities between magnetic and electrostatic attraction. Gilbert was the first to declare the planet Earth to be a magnet.

Gilbert was a Doctor, and the physician to the Queen of England. His home became the meeting place for the best minds of England at the time, and this group soon became "The Royal Society" that was formed to research, write, review, and publish scientific papers.

So the study of the magnet was the very beginning of modern science.