Sharing code is not always the answer. Independent thinking implies independence, in code and more abstractly.
The real 'mistake' is allowing the drama to escalate to the point that it is toxic. People who are truly interested don't care about who is right and who is wrong.
When disagreements like this come up, having common and good test cases are probably the most important (and is indeed the way in which the problem, generation of non-Boltzman behavior, was found).
In the end ST2 itself is flawed, and Princeton admitted that the discussion of water was not significantly advanced through this drama. Is it worth it?
Understanding the argument and its importance should be the focus.
Sharing code is not the full answer, especially in case of Monte-Carlo simulations in physics, because
that kind of algorithm is hard to test: What is the testing oracle?
What is the specification?
But sharing code is part of the answer.
Setting up a culture where it is unacceptable to submit a paper
without open-sourcing the code and suitable testing (for simple
edge ases), and suitable scripts that make reproducing the software
simulations easy, is good scientific 'hygiene'. See for example [1,
2] for efforts towards reproducible software submissions in computer
science.
Reproduciblility is the very essence of the scientific method.
In this case, independent thinking did come up with independent results, but the refusal to share code significantly delayed the recognition of which line of inquiry had been more successful.
You might want to be careful about using that "was it worth it?" argument - someone might reasonably ask, was it worth funding either team? If science doesn't show that it does good work, then its funding can be more easily questioned.
Ordinary text can be confusing. That is not a reason for not publishing, and one of the purposes of a journal's editors is to keep the confused and confusing stuff at bay.
