> People working at facebook would love to publish this data, and let other researchers take a look...

Why would they love to do so considering this will end up being detrimental to Facebook's profitability and thus their compensation and/or promotion opportunities?

Because they would love to do it, if it didn't affect their careers detrimentally.

Any study on Facebook data would generate several papers in good publications, great for the more scholarly inclined working at Facebook

Arguably hiding this data until public rage inevitably boils over is worse for Facebook long term