Thanks to a steer from Ellis Pratt I had a very informative conversation with Chris Atherton of the University of Central Lancashire - just what I needed.
Once I had outlined my putative PhD research proposal to her, she patiently and gently commented that as is so often the case, it was actually several projects. We then went through it, peering into the constituent parts.
Maybe this is one essential difference between post-grad academic work on a subject and work in the commercial sphere. The commercial requirement is for a broad, eye-catching idea with lots of impressionist pieces to illustrate it. The data has to be good enough to pass muster and build into an overall plausible proof of the starting hypothesis. The academic work requires peering more deeply into single topic, defining the subject of investigation ever more tightly to and getting the best-possible data to get a provable representation of what's happening.
