Acknowledgements

There are two people, above all others, without whom this thesis would not have happened: Professor Bruce Davies and my husband, Andy Harcombe. Their support, encouragement and critique have been unconditional and outstanding and this thesis is theirs, as much as mine.

I would also like to thank my Director of Studies, Professor Julien Baker, for continual support and guidance and for funding my research and other supervisors who have helped along the way: Dr. Fergal Grace; Dr. Nick Sculthorpe and Dr. Steve Cooper.

I am grateful to other researchers who have helped answer queries about their work: Dr. Lee Hooper and Dr. Patty Siri-Tarino in particular.

I am indebted to the library staff at the University of the West of Scotland for finding and obtaining all the historical papers needed for this work. Thomas Mcgreevy deserves special mention for his ongoing support from December 2012 to December 2015. Barlow Moors book finding services have also been invaluable in securing the grey literature.

Zoë Harcombe

p.s. the text on this site is a replica of my full thesis with the following exceptions/differences: i) the thesis used the Harvard referencing system - this has numerical referencing and ii) the meta-analysis check lists and funnel plots (appendices 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11 from the thesis) have been omitted. This was done to save space in the paperback publication we produced of the thesis and the text here is a replica of the paperback.

 



Sign up to get full access to this and all other articles and receive a weekly email that takes an in-depth assessment into the latest health topics in the news.
To continue reading, please login below or sign up for a subscription. Thank you.