>the credibility of the study is lost on me. For me it's the pure survivorship bias. >“Who becomes an inventor in America?” is the title of a study by Alex Be

>the credibility of the study is lost on me. For me it's the pure survivorship bias. >“Who becomes an inventor in America?” is the title of a study by Alex Bell, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen published in 2019. >It is based on an impressively comprehensive dataset. The authors studied the lives of 1.2 million inventors in the US from birth to adulthood. True to the title of the study, but it doesn't appear to speak about lost opportunities which were actually (not theoretically) hindering those who were not in the study. To get a more accurate picture you would need to more intensively study those who would have realized a significant invention, with only the lack of opportunity as a roadblock. You wouldn't be able to locate subjects like that nearly as easily as published inventors. They don't have any directory of non-published near-inventors ;) Talent is everywhere but it is quite rare. Still in excess compared to opportunity though.