[asdff]

Certain fields are a lot easier to do novel work in. For a grad student in computer science/computational biology, you practically don't need any grant funding at all. You can download public data, work on the university hpc for basically free, publish whatever the hell you want, and pay your stipend with a TAship. Others, where you have to regularly buy reagents or maintain an animal model, you pretty much need grant support to buy these things.