[DrScientist]

Indeed. You do need some idea of what you are going to do before being funded.

The tricky bit is that in research, and this a bit like the act of programming, you often discover import stuff in the process of doing - and the more innovative the area - the more likely this is to happen.

Big labs deal with this by having enough money to self-fund prospective work, or support things for extra time - the real problem is that new researchers - who often have the new ideas, are the most constrained.