You've attributed one connotation (probably the one most known to public due to media reporting of scientist malfeasance) to the phrase "massage data". Which

You've attributed one connotation (probably the one most known to public due to media reporting of scientist malfeasance) to the phrase "massage data". Which actually has the more general meaning of to manipulate, to process data. Perhaps to get the data into different format, or to extract just the rows/columns/bits that are of interest.