> Scientific software should be held to a different set of standards than non-scientific software, primarily because you can probably not assume that your reading is familiar with the underlying domain.

As someone who works as a programmer and system analyst dealing with code in a non-scientific business domain where I've also worked on the domain side, I don't think that this separates scientific code from any other codes. Programmers often disdain domain knowledge beyond that which they already have found to be immediately relevant. Which is perfectly understandable -- there's a reason they chose to specialize in programming rather than as domain experts in whatever domain.