What we need is Boffin Pride! ;)

My Concise OED (1990) says

boffin. n. esp. Brit. colloq. a person engaged in scientific (esp. military) research. [20th c.: orig, unkn.]

But that's largely irrelevant since the OED simply describes how _we_ are using words, rather than prescribing how we should use them.

I always took /boffin/ to be perjorative, and it always seems to used negatively in El Reg. (But maybe they mean it affectionately?) And maybe the term can be reclaimed from -ve connotations in the same way geek seems to be a much more +ve word thesedays.