“but I haven’t seen any non-anecdotal evidence that the next generation of Einsteins is being denied their fair share of grants”

I haven’t seen any evidence anecdotal or not that would suggest the next generation of Einsteins is being denied their fair share of grants, but I have to admit that if it were the case, I would expect news of such a neglected talent to come anecdotally long (possibly decades) before it was properly recognised. I guess what I’m saying is that your comment suggest you have actually heard anecdotal evidence that the next generation of Einsteins is being denied their fair share of grants, and that doesn’t half sound interesting! Tell us more!

“First planet with water” alleged found outside solar system

I thought this wasn’t the first to have any (significant?) at all (some traces have to be just about anywhere), and this “water” is steam, but it’s neat.

As for funding or otherwise cultivating/harvesting the next generation of [out of the mainstream] Einsteins, I would also like to see more attention paid looking for good insights by gifted amateurs. (It’s a straw man to ask whether they’d come up with “new theories” – most mainstream researchers don’t even do that.) There are various loose ends and interpretations and lesser insights to tug at, as we can see looking at new answers to best interpret Thomas precession or the right-angle lever paradox or the effect of changing fields on dipoles etc. appearing in American Journal of Physics, Nuovo Cimento, Foundations of Physics, etc. even in recent decades. Fiddling with those kind of interesting but currently unglamorous and sidelined questions like the dynamics of extended bodies (especially, extending accelerating bodies, with the stress corrections) in relativity is something amateurs can actually work on (I did, and found out an interesting point about the apparent mass of accelerating bodies at the end of a long string.) I suppose its the physics equivalent of looking for comets or first sighting of novas or etc.