I love Rust and I don't know much about data science but from my understanding many data scientists are not hardcore programmers it the same way that many programmers are not necessarily great at sysadmin. It's a tool, but it's not really the core of their job. In particular they mention Python being very popular in these circles.
Switching from garbage collected and dynamically typed to manual memory management + static typing + borrow checker + trait-based generics is going to be a deep dive for these people. Maybe they'd end up better off in the end though, who knows. I personally think that dynamic typing and GCs are overrated and their benefits overstated but that's obviously not the consensus out there.
I guess the core of my argument is that none of these features need to be used. It's very easy to write basic scripts in Rust at least in my experience. Maybe you might encounter difficulty with the borrow checker occasionally, once in a blue moon now that non lexical lifetimes are a thing. Most of the other disadvantages also apply to Swift.
Either way, people will find a way to justify their preference. The people in question liked Swift, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Switching from garbage collected and dynamically typed to manual memory management + static typing + borrow checker + trait-based generics is going to be a deep dive for these people. Maybe they'd end up better off in the end though, who knows. I personally think that dynamic typing and GCs are overrated and their benefits overstated but that's obviously not the consensus out there.