Has any research been done to scientifically evaluate various coding standards?
As we all know, in the software development world there is a huge amount of passionate debate about coding standards: brackets on the same line or new line, when to indent and by how much, tabs or spaces, etc.  

Has anyone ever done any actual scientific research to determine what coding standards produce the "best" code (where "best" could be any specific criterion: readable, error-free, etc)?  

How would one even go about doing this?  How does one quantify what is the "best" standard?  Clearly it would have to be language-specific.  Is it even possible?

Has any research been done to scientifically evaluate various coding standards?
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As we all know, in the software development world there is a huge amount of passionate debate about coding standards: brackets on the same line or new line, when to indent and by how much, tabs or spaces, etc.  

Has anyone ever done any actual scientific research to determine what coding standards produce the "best" code (where "best" could be any specific criterion: readable, error-free, etc)?  

How would one even go about doing this?  How does one quantify what is the "best" standard?  Clearly it would have to be language-specific.  Is it even possible?
