[glofish]

I think your reply confounds two distinct issues accessibility: (gatekeeping) and ability to succeed in the field.

The merit can be thought in two ways

- Can people that want to and deserve to be scientists become one?

- Once you are scientists, will hard work and ability reward you with a satisfying career?

I agree that in the former we made great progress and the situation is better than ever.

But at the same time I also think the latter, which is closer to what the word "meritocracy" means, is in worse shape than ever

[earthscienceman]

You make excellent points and we completely agree. I'm in a huge slump for exactly this. I've spent the last three years building an extremely useful proof of concept for environmental monitoring and being rewarded for it is literally an active fight.

However, this is primarily tied to the incentives in place for judging science. Extremely important work often has no value in the current structure, due to all of the publish-or-perish and University hierarchies that have been written about ad-nauseum but that have yet to significantly change. I have nothing meaningful to add to that conversation in fact. We know what the problems are. We just don't fix them.

[lnwlebjel]

> building an extremely useful proof of concept for environmental monitoring and being rewarded for it is literally an active fight.

It seems that it has always been this way. See "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley for many examples - and fight on.

[moralestapia]

>Can people that want to and deserve to be scientists become one?

The problem with that is that it could always be treated as a subjective measurement. And who are you going to appoint for that? The people who are already in the system. Surprise, you have created (again) the perfect conditions for nepotism to arise.