During early research in nuclear energy, why were scientists surprised that the products from splitting a uranium nucleus had less mass than the reactants ?

Scientists expected that the law of conservation of mass would apply to nuclear fission in terms of the masses of the subatomic particles. In reality, the mass of an atom is not equal to the sum of the masses of the subatomic particles that make it up. This is because of the energy that binds the subatomic particles. This energy has mass and when the bond is broken, the mass of the energy of the bonds is lost resulting to what we now cal, a mass defect.