It's likely true that nowadays it's unnecessarily harder to establish oneself in science, but I seriously doubt it's so much unnecessarily harder as to warrant the scepticism I see in this subthread.
Off the top of my head, some post-Einstein examples that give me doubt:
More generally, it's not obvious to me that convincing other scientists to publish one's papers based on personal connections is actually easier (or better) than convincing them to publish one's papers based on peer review.
Thanks for listing these examples! They indeed seem to provide counterexamples to the trend of increasing bureaucratization and credentialism, though I must note that they are all several decades old.
However, more importantly, my main point is that bureaucratization tends to have the same negative effect on science as on any other field of human endeavor. The number one tendency in every bureaucracy is that things should be done in such a way that everyone can cover his ass and avoid any personal responsibility no matter what happens. In contrast, producti...
Please have a look at this Youtube user account. I immediately thought of this site upon watching a couple of his clips. I am told we have tried here to publish some stuff in audiovisual fomat, but it didn't quite work out. Maybe we should contact this guy, perhaps we could profit from each other's work and experience? I am fairly hopeful that he could use some of the material here, and we could use some of his talent with the medium.
This video, for instance, looks like it was taken right out of this very blog