but sounded correct to someone who didn’t know better

specious /spē′shəs/ adjective

Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious.
"a specious argument."

and then the real answer will be hidden or something silly, or in some cases where money is involved the correct answer might have been removed

They have probably only provided a small amount of available data, and have much more data, of different type.

Yes we’ve got the data, but now we need it from different angles!

They’ve finally gone full /HailCorporate, become the thing some of the original people of the site would probably not have agreed with in many ways

Yes, bring us the consensus engine