> why would the authors generally not include their code? Decades of "printing out the code listings would cost too much paper" made many researchers get comfo

> why would the authors generally not include their code? Decades of "printing out the code listings would cost too much paper" made many researchers get comfortable with the idea that nobody would ever see the code behind their work. That means: - your code can be shit and potentially buggy and nobody will point and laugh at you - replication is harder, so you can bluff some of the details - if key findings are actually bugs, nobody will find out These are all terrible reasons, but they're comfortable reasons as well. Open access was the first barrier, code included is simply the next. If code included would've been commonplace, fiascos such as Imperial College of London's possibly-totally-bogus covid simulation [0][1] would've never made it to the cabinet. [0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led... [1] https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim