In biological sciences it's a well known secret that most of what you write your grants on is for work that you've already done. This is not about being "boring" vs interesting. It's pragmatism to survive and get funding.
Is it not that way in other sciences? It's funny that I just assumed all sciences did the same thing. In fact, my wife works in a museum, and I was stunned to find out that they write grants for work that isn't even started yet.
CS is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. You write grants for things you haven't done yet but also you typically have some initial work (maybe a minor publication, maybe not) to prove the direction is promising enough to fund.
Thats interesting. Thats how a friend of mine who's finishing up her major in biology explained it when she told me about how her professors lab got grants.
