There's a lot of advice here, but very little data to support any of it. Since you're a scientist, why not take an experimental approach to answering this quest

There's a lot of advice here, but very little data to support any of it. Since you're a scientist, why not take an experimental approach to answering this question? Publish your code, for one (selected) paper. Monitor (a) the download log, and (b) the emails you get related to your code. I hypothesize that you will see some combination of three effects: (1) you will get lots of downloads (which means people are using your code, good work!), perhaps with lots of follow-up emails and perhaps not depending on what the code does; (2) you will get lots of emails from random nutjobs looking to pick holes in your work, and you will waste your time answering them; (3) you will get almost completely ignored. Whatever the outcome, I think a lot of people would be interested in to hearing about what you learn.