Have you seen typical research code? It's crap. If you looked at it, your first reaction would probably be "Wow, this is crap." It's created in a hurry, usually grows by accretion, and the people who write it are usually pretty half-assed at programming, having made the solidly practical decision to focus more on the other aspects of their field. The commenting is usually lousy-to-nonexistent, the indentation is frequently screwy, and everything about it just screams "I am a temporary hack, written only to get publishable results."
And that's to be expected, because of how most scientific code gets written, and what the incentives are. And releasing this code would still be strictly better than not releasing it. We just need to keep the expectations of code quality low, which the CRAPL license does.
Only programmers have high expectations of code quality. If I'm a biologist, my target audience is other biologists, not programmers.
Your comment reads to me like you want non-programmers to ritually humiliate themselves by labeling their stuff as CRAP before you will deign to parse it for correctness. Patronizing people is not a good way to get them on-side.
We just need to keep the expectations of code quality low, which the CRAPL license does.
The purpose of the CRAPL is to make code accessible, not to lower expectations. It's not about what you think of the code, it's about whether the code yields correct results.
How to Design Programs is a great text in general, but I think it holds particular power for researchers. I still write some janky code, but particularly when I'm doing R, I find myself falling easily into the HTDP mindset.
Not to dredge up a functional vs imperative battle, but I feel FP has a lower impedance mismatch with mathematical concepts generally.
And that's to be expected, because of how most scientific code gets written, and what the incentives are. And releasing this code would still be strictly better than not releasing it. We just need to keep the expectations of code quality low, which the CRAPL license does.