My paper demonstrating a side channel attack on RSA via hyperthreading was rejected from the crypto preprint archive on the basis that it was "not cryptography".

(Reviewers at J.Crypto subsequently sat on it for a year and then suggested I submit it to a journal on CPU microarchitecture instead.)

Novel research is uniquely susceptible to "cool but it's not part of our field", because that critique is entirely correct until the research gets published!

Not defending anyone but it's quite common for people to hold different definitions of words with some unknown presumed context in mind that others don't see in the moment. I'd argue it's the single biggest reason for all arguments in recent human history.

Well of course, it doesn't have a soul. /s

Yeah, I have a hard time reconciling this especially since biology and biologic research often involves things like enzymes which both aren't alive and are synthetically created.

I'm certain cell magazine has published articles on novel enzyme discovery.

Exoplanets also aren't planets. Some things just seem to have definitions with a history that get applied to new discoveries that don't fall within the definition. Distinguishing random rocks in space from planets was done by requiring planets to orbit around the sun, and so planets elsewhere cannot be called planets no matter that it's 1:1 the same thing. Biology probably has a similar history of trying to draw a line somewhere between what was created and what evolved to be part of the 'natural' world