"Sometimes people do good work and don't win major awards" is hardly a rebuttal to the notion that meritocracy exists, because it's not some binary state. To say there's no such thing as merit, you have to say that recognition of merit is on average directionally wrong.
Given the huge technological advances of even just the past few decades, that's a pretty hard sell.
Well, we went from talking about whether the best 'scientific theories' were recognized to whether certain individuals won certain awards, so it's hard to do anything but broad strokes.
I'm not here trying to refute the idea that sometimes people get passed over undeservedly, I'm refuting the all too common idea that this means that meritocracy is binary and anyone ever getting passed over means that merit doesn't exist and cannot be recognized.
If you don't hold that idea then good, we don't have to argue.
Given the huge technological advances of even just the past few decades, that's a pretty hard sell.