“Applied philosophy of science” has always occurred in science - with or without philosophers. Scientists have always thought about what they did, on multiple levels. The evidence that they need external help, or that external help historically made a critical difference, is a bit stretched.
I would agree that 'applied philosophy of science' can be done by scientists. The point here is definitely not to denigrate scientists as 'thoughtless', but to argue that sometimes the specific tool-set in which philosophers are trained can be, and has been, relevant to scientific practice.
I'm not sure what 'evidence' you're referring to?
I assume that claims like “Philosophers/philosophy of science can offer concrete tools for academic research (in science)” is based on some concrete evidence and historical examples. If not, what is it based on? Conviction that it is self-evident?
Vedanta and Schrödinger
Even if he was "inspired" by it when working on wave mechanics, and not retroffited it in his later reminiscences (which is common), it was a set of poetic analogies rather than anything that could pass as a serious philosophical argument. That's not what Carl or philosophers of science had in mind.
Mach and Einstein ?
Could you provide some instances where any of Einstein's classic papers cited a philosopher or a work of philosophy? (I tried and failed). Mach was both a philosopher and physicist. Was his actual physics better for it? From "The Search" (1934) by C.P. Snow (of the "Two Cultures" fame).
Not conviction that it's self-evident. There have been, and continue to be, philosophers and scientists actively collaborating on projects. I want to make clear, though, that I don't think you'd want constant philosophical involvement in all parts/areas of scientific research. Also, ...
it is understandable that scientists can be incredulous about philosophical involvement. For one, some attempts at applied philosophy of science by philosophers are truly dire.
Philosophers/philosophers of science can point out logical contradictions and fallacies about how science or reality works, thereby greatly reducing the search space for viable scientific discoveries.
Give me an example where they have done it.
"The homunculus argument is an informal fallacy whereby a concept is explained in terms of the concept itself, recursively, without first defining or explaining the original concept. This fallacy arises most commonly in the theory of vision."
Here is an example in the wild where a man argues that LLMs are the path to AGI due to ignorance of philosophy of mind.
If you accept Kuhn's account of scientific revolutions, it was always nonsensical to expect LLM hallucinations to be inevitably fixed in later chatbot product versions, as if these were minor programming bugs to be ironed out when given a bit more time for engineering work.
This makes no sense at all... Plus, even Kuhn did not accept how most philosophers interpreted his account of scientific revolutions ;)