Thread by @precatlady

Here's my take, having used this as an archaelogy (#pubarch) lesson many times before: the fridge quiz is bad for the thing NYT says it's for, but it's bad because our subjective assessments of economic, social, gender, and ethnic identity using groceries is very unreliable.

https://twitter.com/shane_burley1/status/1321497592455258113

Exhibit 1: I've been teaching a #pubarch garbology lesson for about 7 years now and can only remember once where a team got close on those predictions. My colleague made the exercise with his university students, counting and listing their household garbage.

While someone's purchases/food/garbage may be informative about them & may reveal things they don't tell you (like how much cake they really eat) it isn't like you can just glance at a fridge or receipt and know the people of a household.

Exhibit 2: Garbology has been a deep and broad fascination for decades in part because it is actually not simple, it is intricate work to connect garbage deposits to people.
Rathje 1964: jstor.org/stable/41685583
NYT 1997: nytimes.com/1992/07/05/boo…

Exhibit 3: Contemporary archaeology later emerged as scholars began to prepare methodologies and theories to incorporated to living stakeholders in communities. link.springer.com/referenceworke…

This was constructed in haste so I hope it makes sense. I'm essentially saying: you may think your assessments are obvious or based on experience, but if you look at a large sample and examine systematically, you'd be surprised what little you can be confident about in one case.