I'm sure he'd say it's fine for scientists to study people. He was just using that meme about one hand clapping as a clumsy example of a pointless question. In Zen Buddhism it's a koan. A more relevant example would be, as he said, the question of the meaning of meaning (which is the title of an article by Hillary Putnam). Anyway, I found it best not to quibble, but to reply to the essence of what Tyson was saying about philosophy's lack of utility or about how it might "distract" scientists.