Understanding Scholarship: Sausage-Making and Transparency
Exploring the Messy but Necessary Process of Scholarly Creation
Note: This essay was prepared with the research assistance and ghostwriting of ChatGPT 4.0. No LLMAI were harmed in the process, although I felt inclined to threaten them from time to time.
Author’s Preface
Years ago, I was hanging out with a work colleague while visiting Salt Spring Island. I remarked that I considered myself a bit of an intellectual. He scoffed. I was hurt. Maybe he was correct to laugh. In any case, I have spent a lot of my time thinking about scholarly issues—maybe not well, maybe not bright enough, maybe not learned enough, but certainly reflective. In any case, I've done a lot of reading, understood some, I guess, misunderstood a lot, retained some, forgotten much. So now I write about these issues, using large language model artificial intelligence to assist me where I have intellectual gaps.
I started this new series on scholarship and understanding scholarship, with the subtext that it's a lot like sausage-making. So here I go into just how it might be like sausage-making.
Introduction
In this exploration of scholarship, we look at the all-too-familiar comparison often made between academic research and sausage-making. The metaphor, frequently attributed to Otto von Bismarck, suggests that the process behind creating something as complex as scholarship or law is best left unseen. But do we really want to avoid looking behind the curtain? In truth, shedding light on these processes is critical if we’re serious about improving scholarship. Transparency, far from being a luxury, is a necessity for a clearer, more reliable academic landscape.
The Sausage-Making Process
Sausage-making, much like scholarship, is often seen as a messy and opaque process, riddled with ingredients many would prefer not to know about. Yet, the reality of sausage-making is far more structured than the metaphor suggests.
Ingredients: The base of any sausage is made from a mixture of meats, spices, and additives, including trimmings and less desirable cuts. Not the most glamorous, but essential for the product’s flavor.
Grinding and Filling: The meats are ground, seasoned, and stuffed into casings—often made from animal intestines. This process of grinding mirrors the refinement of ideas in academic research, where raw thoughts are squeezed into academic forms.
Curing and Cooking: Curing involves preserving and transforming the raw materials into something more palatable. In scholarship, curing happens through peer review, critique, and revision, turning the raw data into something digestible for the academic community.
However, just as with sausage, the final product in scholarship is often polished and refined. Knowing the details behind it might be discomforting but necessary if we’re serious about improving academic rigor.
Scholarship as Sausage-Making
Scholarship is often likened to sausage-making because, like the butcher's art, research involves dealing with flawed, incomplete, and biased data. The "raw material" of academic research is far from pristine. Scholars must grind this material down, refining it through a process of analysis and interpretation. But the final work—whether it be a journal article, a monograph, or a public presentation—may not fully reveal the twists, turns, and messes that shaped its creation.
And herein lies the problem. There’s an implicit suggestion that this mess should be hidden, that we’re better off not knowing how the sausage is made. However, if the goal is to produce more trustworthy scholarship, we should demand more transparency. After all, no one should accept a sausage, or a scholarly article, without knowing what’s inside it.
Challenging the Metaphor
This comparison between sausage-making and scholarship has been contested. Many argue that rather than hiding the process, we should focus on improving it. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” (Brandeis, 1913). In other words, the more we expose these processes to scrutiny, the cleaner and more reliable they become.
While Bismarck’s sausage metaphor implies concealment, transparency is key. Stanley A. Feder, president of Simply Sausage, argued that comparing sausage-making to politics is unfair. According to him, sausage-making is a controlled, transparent process, with careful oversight ensuring safety and quality (History News Network, 2017). This challenges the common perception that both sausage and research should hide their processes. On the contrary, clarity and oversight lead to better outcomes.
We see this in journalism and governance as well. Investigative reporters shine light on hidden practices, forcing reforms and ensuring public accountability. The Guardian argued that keeping legislative processes hidden only encourages bad practices and discourages reform (UMB Blogs, 2020). Similarly, revealing how the "sausage" of scholarship is made ensures more reliable, ethical, and thoughtful research.
Transparency in Scholarship
In scholarship, as in sausage-making, transparency is vital. The process of producing academic work often involves navigating institutional pressures, biases, and errors. Scholars, much like sausage makers, work behind the scenes, grinding through data and theory to create something digestible for publication. But unlike sausage-making, the process of scholarship should not be hidden. It’s through scrutiny—of data, methods, and even the influences behind the research—that we improve the reliability of scholarship.
There’s a historical precedent for this. In financial systems, auditing serves as a vital tool for ensuring transparency. Without audits, organizations can hide inefficiencies, mismanagement, or worse. Similarly, academic research needs this kind of oversight. Scrutinizing the research process, uncovering flaws, and improving methods will ultimately make the final product more reliable.
By demanding transparency in scholarship, we can ensure that the work presented to the public is not just polished on the surface but structurally sound beneath.
Conclusion
While the sausage-making metaphor suggests that messy processes are best left unseen, transparency is essential for improving the integrity of scholarship. Scholars, much like consumers of sausage, deserve to know what goes into the product they’re consuming. By shedding light on the often-hidden process of research, we can improve academic rigor, eliminate biases, and build a more trustworthy knowledge base. In the end, sunlight may indeed be the best disinfectant for both sausage-making and scholarship alike.