> You raise an important question. It is important to detail the actual contribution, since programming may be perceived as purely implementing an idea with no creative input.
Beyond creative input, there's also the question of liability in case of academic misconduct. I'd question if someone acting in a technician role (say a programming professional) would have a full understanding of the manuscript and so could accept authorship; they may also lack the ability to check the findings of the manuscript which is also problematic.
> If you successfully take an idea from concept to working software, or if a research project requires complex software to be written, I think it is almost inevitable that the software developer will end up making a creative contribution.
I think we need to be careful about how we define creative contribution; there's a line to be drawn somewhere in there between a creative contribution for the sake of the software (i.e., speeding up execution time by 4x for a simulation running on a cluster) versus a creative contribution that enables the research (i.e., a novel real-time optimization algorithm for electrostimulation). The latter certainly warrants authorship, but I don't think the former does.
> I'm also a bit suspicious about the justification that you can't be listed because aren't a "scientist". Of course, I don't know the details, but it seems fishy.
Ditto, which is why I asked. My first thought was that it sounded like scholarly authorship was poorly explained and if so I was hoping to help out with that.