> What he seems to be asking for is the ability to take the code you used to produce the pretty graphs and tables in your paper and re-run it,
You're assuming such code exists. If the graphs were produced by hand (eg, typing things into MATLAB to create the plot and then saving the figure), then there is no code to hand off. Now the code request has risen to "redo all that work".
And, as an academic myself, we should force people to save and publish their matlab scripts.
That is not to much to ask, but the academic system is full of perverse incentives. Doing good, robust work looses to good looking, quick and dirty all the time.
We need funding bodies to require publication of all these details, and we need to structurally combat publish or perish. Hire people based on their three best results, not on h-factor or other statistical meassures.
Some (many?) use MATLAB interactively to produce figures and then save them by hand. Often this involves a mixture of typing commands and clicking on GUI elements like "add colorbar". So a m-file that produces the figure doesn't exist; at best there would be fragments of code buried in MATLAB's command history.
You're assuming such code exists. If the graphs were produced by hand (eg, typing things into MATLAB to create the plot and then saving the figure), then there is no code to hand off. Now the code request has risen to "redo all that work".