I was reading the book The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research by Marian Petre when I came across the following idiom:
… anyone with an armchair and reasonable general knowledge can usually find several reasons for querying the representativeness of a sample without much effort. These scruples tend to be slaughtered on the altar of expediency the moment that the questionnaires go into the post (questionnaires are a favourite method for
collecting large and dubious data sets)…
A google search shows this is not an extremely common phrase. What does it mean?
Best Answer
This is a metaphor. The key words are:
AHD altar
For slaughter, see sacrifice:
AHD sacrifice
Macmillan expediency
So, scruples are allowed to die just to produce some immediate result.
In the context of the quote, it means carefulness or reservations about the soundness of survey data are ignored to get to the desired result, the publication of PHD research.
You may find more results searching for the metaphor with the wording "sacrificed on the altar of", with the last word being left blank.