&quot;The only reason Veronica was able to carry out her experiment was that I had the flexibility to spend hours struggling through paperwork, and because I had a social network of scientists I’ve developed as a science writer. This was an exercise in privilege.&quot;<p>No, it was an exercise in barriers. Everybody [1] has enough &quot;privilege&quot; to do this experiment, by which I mean the experiment itself without the &quot;fair&quot; elements, with little more than a slightly-interested science teacher. They just aren&#x27;t allowed to do it by the science fair. Being able to speak with &quot;actual&quot; scientists about counting bacteria is at most a slight bonus; it is not necessary to the process, learning about it by reading would be a fine education on its own, and even failing at the process would be educational in its own way, as the author describes in his own experiences. (Science fairs have a major role to play in the pernicious idea that science is only &quot;successful&quot; when it obtains the positive result the experimenter was looking for... but that&#x27;s a separate rant.)<p>This isn&#x27;t someone being born with silver spoons in their mouth. This is regulation thoughtlessly applied with no thought about the costs. If &quot;privilege&quot; issues were as easy as just <i>removing</i> some regulation, we probably wouldn&#x27;t be talking about it so much.<p>[1]: Everyone plausibly within the scope of this article, anyhow, which is places that have science fairs at all. That would be a separate issue.