Scientists with "prestige" get positions at nice universities, labs, raises, smart people who want to talk to them, smart PhD students who want to work with them, etc.
Scientists without "prestige" end up being poorly paid, teaching intro to chemistry at a community college to students who just want a piece of paper to help them find a job, and unable to get the funding to even buy a laptop, let alone a lab.
So prestige matters a lot to scientists, whether they like it or not.
The only way you have a chance at solving this system is by changing the reward metrics; find a way to make it more rewarding to release the data then to keep it for yourself. But if you just mandate the data be released, then the scientists will be actively discouraged from collecting data, and probably move away from the field.
Scientists without "prestige" end up being poorly paid, teaching intro to chemistry at a community college to students who just want a piece of paper to help them find a job, and unable to get the funding to even buy a laptop, let alone a lab.
So prestige matters a lot to scientists, whether they like it or not.
The only way you have a chance at solving this system is by changing the reward metrics; find a way to make it more rewarding to release the data then to keep it for yourself. But if you just mandate the data be released, then the scientists will be actively discouraged from collecting data, and probably move away from the field.