Not "scientists" in general, but astronomers: "Without a proprietary period, an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing it, months crafting a successful proposal to execute it, and precious hours of highly competitive JWST time to actually perform the observations—only to have someone else scoop up the data from a public archive and publish the result."

Big deal. It's not like the findings of astronomy have any impact on our daily struggle. Astronomy is a curious amalgam of philosophy and science anyway, given its theories about the origin and trajectory of the universe.