Re:What's the point of writing good scientific software?
by saraid216 on Friday February 08, 2013 @05:05PM
(#5190398)
> it seems axiomatic that sharing your algorithms, code, and data are necessary and beneficial to the scientific community.
It seems that way, but it isn't. If a cultural foolishness causes you to lose significant credibility undeservedly, it's actually more beneficial to withhold things that could damage it so that you can continue your essentially still-very-useful work.
You could spearhead the fight against said cultural foolishness, but that's time and energy spent doing something other than the work you want to do and are best at.
Someone has to, but why you? This is the Bystander Effect.
From the perspective of what "science" is claimed to mean, namely the advancement of human knowledge in a way which is repeatable and verifiable, it seems axiomatic that sharing your algorithms, code, and data are necessary and beneficial to the scientific community.
As a researcher, you don't gain a lot from publishing YOUR code ... but you sure might gain a lot from being able to re-use someone else's code in your domain, or more easily replicate someone else's experiment.
In short: You should share your code because it's the Right Thing to Do if you want to grow human knowledge.