A benevolent conspiracy to hide a dangerous scientific discovery by lying about the state of the art and denying resources to anyone whose research might uncover the lie. Ultimately failing because apparently unrelated advances made rediscovering the true result too easy.
I always saw it as a reply to the idea that physicists could have hidden the possibility of an atomic bomb for more than a few years.
That was quite different though (spoiler alert)
A benevolent conspiracy to hide a dangerous scientific discovery by lying about the state of the art and denying resources to anyone whose research might uncover the lie. Ultimately failing because apparently unrelated advances made rediscovering the true result too easy.
I always saw it as a reply to the idea that physicists could have hidden the possibility of an atomic bomb for more than a few years.