In this recent question, there was a comment 'The "zero point" of Kelvin is natural, but the scale is not'. This led me to wonder whether setting $R = 1$ in the ideal gas law would be an attractive and more natural temperature scale.
I am aware that changing to such a scale is not practical, the investment in the Kelvin is too great.
In natural units Boltzmann's constant, $k$, is normally set to one, rather than $R$. They differ by a factor of Avogadro's number; a mole is an arbitrarily defined unit based on the kilogram and is not "natural".
At least in my experience of high energy physics choosing $k = 1$ is common practice; I'm sure it occurs in other branches too.
Would setting the ideal gas constant to 1 yield an attractive natural temperature scale?
Not really. The universal gas constant involves two arbitrary units: energy and temperature, and also the unitless mole. Getting rid of the concept of moles results in Boltzmann's constant $k_b$. This is the value that is set to 1 rather than $R$ in all systems of natural units.
