Oh, I know a LOT of scientists who don't want to know an important fact or two!

Fact 1: The genetic clock of a species and its line of ancestry is NOT automatically the same as its generation to generation mutation rate, and cannot be assumed to be so.

Fact 2: The 1,500 fossil individuals known form Africa between 2 & 4.5 million years old, all supposed to be nearer the human lineage than the chimp or human lineage, are not. Many are chimp or gorilla ancestors.

they publish ~2.5m papers/yr, upload 200k+ preprints, make >3m figures, and generate so many supplements that journals added file‑size limits because people kept submitting appendices the size of small video games

i once heard of 14gb of raw data uploaded ‘in case someone might care.’

Anyone saying "Scientists don't want you to know this fact" is about to sell you 'supplements'.

It's funny how misrepresenting prescription drugs is illegal, but you are allowed to flagrantly lie your ass off about 'supplements'.

whether or not they've met scientists is irrelevant. they're still getting paid to write the click-bait headline.

more likely, it's an llm doing the writing and the poor guy who may or may not have met a scientist is out on his ass.

TBF, I haven't come across an individual IRL who made this claim.

Most likely to overshare: science educators and popularizers. Least likely: researchers on the edge of esoteric disciplines.

Marie Curie always just glowed when she talked about her work.

A related joke (originally about engineers):

Scientists make terrible magicians because they always want to explain how the trick works before they show it to you.

In my experience when someone says "scientists don't want you to know" what they are really saying is "science doesn't support my crackpot theory"