This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Buddhism High‑importance This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Buddhism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Buddhism. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page for more details on the projects.BuddhismWikipedia:WikiProject BuddhismTemplate:WikiProject BuddhismBuddhism High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Death Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Religion Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Tibet High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Tibet, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Tibet on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TibetWikipedia:WikiProject TibetTemplate:WikiProject TibetTibet High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

There was a mention in the article of multiple studies, which I've retained. But the only one I am able to document is the UW-Madison study. There are however two journal articles in further reading with PMIDs that might be useful for someone interested in documenting other studies. Skyerise (talk) 14:08, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If another editor would expand the article as much again as I have, it would be eligible for DYK. It was ~8000 bytes at the beginning of 12 July, so it would need to be 40,000 bytes by 19 July. It's now at ~25,000 bytes. Have at it! Skyerise (talk) 14:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYK check passes, AFAIK, so it might be good to go as-is. Викидим (talk) 18:15, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a fact you'd like to highlight and submit. Skyerise (talk) 19:24, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have almost exhausted my limit of free QpQ passes at DYK and do not yet have experience reviewing the DYK submissions, so here is my suggestion: "Dalai Lama persuaded scientists to study a Buddhist tradition". If you also have circumstances, and are OK with the hook, let me know, and I will punch my last free ticket at DYK. Викидим (talk) 18:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if you don't mind. I've another DYK in process and don't want to have 2 at once. Skyerise (talk) 20:55, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, I noticed that the German article is not linked to these and am on my mobile right now, so maybe someone with wikidata access feels inclined to add the link to the German version https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tukdam 2003:C0:FF36:4300:8937:B5C:5734:1F53 (talk) 17:54, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've undone the removal of the field section study and am bringing the discussion with @User:ජපස from FTN over here

It's a bit misleading to claim it's been studied by "western academics". It's actually been studied by religious believers. This is usually disconfirming and is in this case as well... media hype and Dalai Lama funding notwithstanding.

The term here is "Scholar-Practitioner", and they are the norm in Buddhist studies in academic circles. They are Western academics, your attempt to paint them as less credible as believers shows a pretty substantial lack of understanding of this field, particularly the role and influence of Buddhist Modernism on Western Academics. Scholar-practitioners aren't typically bad at bifurcating their beliefs from their publications, though there have been discussions about this in the field of religious studies.

You are welcome to be uncomfortable with that relationship, but unless your discomfort rises to the level of actually having a specific evidenced reason for discrediting their research beyond your perception of bias then this is pretty much straight into why I raised FTN and religion at the village pump; the only biases shining through here in a way that risk damaging an article are removing a peer reviewed publication on the basis of the religion of the author, which is inappropriate.

It's not like the research in question made unreasonable claims that they'd evidence the supernatural. I'm not sure what your actual underlying objection is here other than the religion of the people involved in the study. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 08:24, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was pointed to:

• the Village Pump
• the Fringe Theory notice board

Викидим (talk) 21:49, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The unreasonable claim is that meditating believers could slow the decay of their corpses, no? jps (talk) 16:09, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[2]

I see no reliable sources for that section.

Please provide some if any exist prior to restoring that section.

jps (talk) 16:13, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The sources provided were reliable for the context. UW Madison is a credible source, tricycle is a Secondary source covering the research but is definitely biased towards a Buddhist perspective and I'd try to find a better one. A declaration that a University research group publishing on a topic is not credible does not make it so. The Routledge source you removed is also perfectly acceptable in context. This is frankly getting to the point of disruptive editing and WP:OWN behaviour. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 08:30, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That UW Madison source is truly the opposite of credible—please do me a favor and scan it through again for WP:REDFLAG claims. It's unusable as a source for "Western scientific interest in Tukdam has grown" and some of the other promotional and overly credulous claims. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you have specific objections, feel free to raise them. This is a serious research group associated with a major university that publishes in credible journals. Personal incredulity is not the basis for exclusion of a source. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 13:24, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thankfully my objections are not based on personal incredulity. I am, though, personally incredulous that you find the source to be strong. Do you have any response to the REDFLAG concern? They pop up from the very beginning, so I didn't think quoting some was necessary. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:30, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just saying that you see a red flag does not obligate other editors to agree. For example:

"Western scientific interest in Tukdam has grown" and some of the other promotional and overly credulous claims.

Maybe read the section on why it's of interest to neuroscience? I'm not a neuroscientist and it's not my field, but I don't know if perhaps there is some interest in that specific scientific community. It wouldn't be the first time. You haven't presented any evidence whatsoever that we should take your incredulity over an actual research unit at an academic institution who publishes their findings. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 13:36, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the burden is on those looking to use a source that claims in its own voice that someone lay in the tukdam state for 18 days after death. I'm fine with including some short, plain content on the results of published research, but the self-published site of a research unit, academic or not, is not a strong source even for non-exceptional claims. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:07, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a comment, I disagree with removing the caveats on the study section. I think you may be missing that it appears to be making less of a case around Tukdam but more of a case around why neuroscientists are interested in studying it; i.e. immediate post-mortem brain scans. The caveats that you removed clarified that they only had access after a delayed period. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 11:19, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think we've gotten as far at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Fringe Theories Noticeboard, religious topics, and WP:CANVAS as we're likely to go. Loki, would you be willing to join us here?

@Firefangledfeathers, I think you're on the right track with some sort of "short, plain content". I haven't read through any source completely, and I've only glanced at a couple of them, but here's my current thinking:

• The article should say that two notable people had a conversation in 1995 that has led to a research project.
• This research has involved various (ordinary) medical tests on (physically) dead bodies.
• None of the results have been surprising. Physical tests for signs of life on physically dead bodies has not found evidence of the kind of physical activity we associate with living bodies.

Does that all sound about right for the main points?

Here's my main concern:

We (or at least most of us) are looking at this from the POV of hard-science physicalism: meditation is an activity performed by a functioning brain, acting on itself and the rest of a 100% physical body. Ergo, when the brain stops, meditation perforce stops. But I believe that the Buddhist POV is extremely different, seeing external forms (e.g., whether the brain is functioning) as less than real, and only the spiritual form is the actually-real thing. Meditation, then, isn't an activity the brain can do; it's something that reality does (I'm hazy on Buddhist ideas, but if memory serves, they don't go in much for souls, and everything in the natural world is merely a transient manifestation of the True™ Reality), without being constrained to a given set of physical requirements (such as a functioning brain). So IMO we need to watch for a tendency to assume that our materialist culture is the One True™ Culture that really knows what reality is ("These instruments say his brain stopped working, and that proves definitely he's not meditating any longer, which means it's impossible for him to be in tukdam"). We also need to avoid "in-universe" language (e.g., saying that a dead person is meditating), because most of our readers come from our culture and will be confused by this.

I have found that thinking about these two stories to help me see (I hope) a little clearer:

• Catholics believe that when you die, your soul probably goes to Purgatory. They believe that some dead people can communicate with them. They believe that some long-dead saints can intervene in the present-day physical world. If someone were using medical tests on the dead body of a Catholic saint to figure out whether the person was in purgatory, Wikipedia would probably find a more or less respectful way to say that people in this religion believe these things and that some research has happened. We'd find a way to do this even if we're personally contemptuous of the research. Category:Miracles is probably full of examples of us being able to write respectfully about physically improbable phenomena and/or beliefs, even though none of us believe in all of them. And if we can write that the Virgin Mary is believed by some people to have given flowers to a Mexican peasant 1,500 years after her presumed death, then why not write that a recently deceased person is believed to have been silently meditating a few days after his?
• In some traditions (e.g., Famadihana), the soul is tied to the corpse in ways that differ from a Western notions. For example, in Famadihana rituals, for the understanding of "dead" that means "soul goes to Heaven", then you're not actually dead until your body has completely decomposed. I read a news story describing a death in one community. The elderly father had died – according to Western science, anyway. But in their culture, the process of dying wasn't complete until you had the burial, which the family couldn't afford to do yet. So they embalmed the body in formaldehyde, and in cultural terms, he was considered still "alive". When you visited the house, you were supposed to ask how he was doing today, be taken into the little room were his preserved body lay to murmur a few words of greeting, and not make a lot of noise (because it would be rude while he was "sleeping"). This was polite behavior. When they saved up enough money to have an expensive funeral, he was buried, and only then he was considered dead. There's no scientific law that defines any words. Words are customary. So it was their custom to consider that elderly father "not dead" before the funeral, just like it would be my custom to consider him "dead". We need to write about this subject in a way that is not denigrating to their culture and customs, even though they differ from my own. We can do this.

I'm convinced that we can come to some sort of arrangement that includes basic information about this in this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what we've got at the moment:

Firefangledfeathers, do you have any actual objection to mentioning the 1995 conversation between Davidson and the Dalai Lama? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Do sources besides the Field team's own site mention it? It tells us about the motivation of the team. It does not really anything about tukdam, except that some claim it kept a body fresh for 13 days, which is the sort of claim we already describe. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:11, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article in the Irish Independent (a daily newspaper) says that RTÉ One ran a television program about this research. I think it might be helpful, in that it provides some cultural explanations (e.g., something called the subtle mind supposedly lives in the heart, so testing brain activity seems irrelevant from the in-universe activity) and comparisons (e.g., to Incorruptibility among Christian saints).

Among books, this from Routledge gives 1992 as the date of the meeting. This book has a page quoting a conversation between the two of them.

Tangentially, via WP:TWL, I find these sources:

• "Memento Mori". Fortean Times, 03085899, March 2015, Issue 325 [3]
• https://time.com/3698318/buddhist-mummified-monk/

about a claim for a 200-year-old case of tukdam.

Also, while I've got it handy, this book describes the origin of the concept in what sounds like an ancient book. Just as Christians might say that the soul lives in the heart, Buddhists believe that consciousness is in the heart rather than the brain, and that death therefore is when consciousness has left the heart. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SamuelRiv, I'd like to invite you from the Village Pump to this page. Perhaps between us all we can come up with something to put in the article that is appropriately encyclopedic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like all the sources that go into the origins of the study are non-independent of the study itself; for example, the Routledge chapter was written by Lott, a member of the team. Your latter two main points from the OP are about the published results of the research, which we could state in a sentence or two. I still am not thinking that describing the origins of the researchers interest will help our readers understand this subject. It would be odd in most places to precede descriptions of studies with content like that. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:13, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most studies don't have a good story behind them; however, sources do talk about stories when they are known to exist. See, e.g., "A key scientific breakthrough that would eventually help protect millions from Covid-19 began with a chance meeting at a photocopier — in 1997, between Professor Katalin Kariko and Dr. Drew Weissman, whose work laid the foundation for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines."[4]

Douglas Koshland would call the vaccine breakthrough a "chance" breakthrough (as opposed to a "charge", when someone is assigned to solve a known problem, or a "challenge", when someone reconciles apparently irreconcilable facts). I don't know how he would classify this meeting, but the fact that their exists a formal taxonomy (called, less formally, the "cha-cha-cha theory"[5]) for classifying how studies are conceived of suggests that people do notice this.

I wonder if the concern might be less about "what's normal" and more about "it looks like an argument from authority". Will some readers turn off their brains the instant they see that the Dalai Lama supported this research? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not! I think he still has wide cultural cachet. I'm fine with mentioning that he's called for scientific research into the state, as we do in the lead; we should probably add some on that to the body. That NYT piece is the sort of thing I'm looking for. Someone independent. I can't say I'll support even if we find it, much as the two vaccine articles don't mention the 1997 encounter. It's at least interesting, which is a plus. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:33, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the stories about the 200-year-old body are interesting in the sense that it seems to be driven by the body's outward appearance. "He looks so life-like" turns into "so he must still be alive". (Of course, we'd need a source making that connection before we could consider putting anything in the article, but that's my own current impression.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I support trimming the section to this text. My original text of the section was even shorter: Old revision of Tukdam. Викидим (talk) 23:56, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it's best to focus on the EEG study, or would a more general statement (essentially, that dead bodies don't show signs of life, no matter which technology you use) would be better? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added the EEG study to (very thinly soured at a time) article since it was a regular scientific article, listing a hypothesis, experiment, results. If the scientists were biased (in this case, expecting positive result), they still published the negative result, and thus demonstrated the proper scientific approach. I happen to be familiar with some scientific research on parapsychology phenomena, made by skeptical scientists, and this EEG study seems similar: claims - experiment - (mostly negative) result. So the EEG study (for me at least) passed the rudimentary test as "science", and I have added it to the article as a very interesting example of research worthy an encyclopedic article. If the other texts on tukdam, published in scientific journals, pass the same "smoke test", they might be added, too. If not, they do not belong to this "Scientific research" section. Викидим (talk) 02:34, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd rather not have a section called "Scientific" research. I'm not even sure that "Look, they did research!" is the right framing. Basically all of the research indicates that these are physically/clinically dead bodies. It might be more appropriate to use them as positive statements: These claims are not being made about people who are in a coma; they're being made about people who are physically dead. See, they checked (list of things) and found no evidence that the bodies are alive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am OK with your wording. However, I think that the EEG study is regular science: Buddhists say that there is something special about the people in tukdam, can we measure it? It is not much different from vanilla variety of medical science. Викидим (talk) 05:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this section just a parallel of the "Research directions" section which (by MOS:MED) can by found in many article with WP:BMI? Generally we would only include "research" which had garnered quality WP:SECONDARY coverage. That somebody did some research is not sufficient reason for it being included in Wikipedia. Bon courage (talk) 08:28, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia IMHO is about things that are not WP:ROTM. Medical research of a religious practice is rare enough to justify our interest, I think. If you search Google Scholar on tukdam, you will find few attempts to research the practice, a very significant percentage of overall scholarly writing about the subject, so WP:DUE looks to be satisfied. Thus, I see nothing wrong with a separate section (but do not object to mentioning the research as part of article text without a dedicated header either). Викидим (talk) 08:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We also accept weaker sources for claims that are outside the mainstream. If Quackwatch self-published a page saying that a sympathetic academic is doing some research and concluded that there's no physical evidence of this religious story being true, we'd not hesitate to include it. But when a peer-reviewed scientific journal says this, we're struggling to believe that it matters. Maybe the solution to this is for someone to e-mail Stephen Barratt and ask him to put up a quick little article for us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The study noted a number of problems with studying claimed tukdam cases, including the typical three day wait after clinical death for the tukdam state to be declared among Tibetan Buddhists

I think this line needs to stay in, because it’s actually discussing the limitations of studying Tukdam specifically in the context of the stated scientific motivation. They wanted to study the state of the brain around the time of death and had to wait three days, creating a gap in the data. That’s not to say the expected result should be “wow, we observed Tukdam in those three days” but rather there was a limitation that prevented the collection of data at the time of death. There is a perfectly valid research interest in what the end of life looks like from a pure brain activity perspective. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 15:45, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think about a sentence summarizing the main conclusion of the primary study is due, and I'd oppose expansion. The study managed to get at one case 26h post-mortem, so we'd have to caveat the caveat; not worth getting into it. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:52, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think without the caveat the sentence left in makes a stronger claim than the paper’s conclusion. Given the context of the stated research goals that feels important, but I can also buy the argument that the caveat isn’t actually critical here. I just worry about it misrepresenting the paper a bit. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 15:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that no more than a mention of the primary study is warranted. JoelleJay (talk) 00:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you satisfied with the status quo? Warren worked out a way to very briefly add some detail. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[6] I don't understand why the user thought we should rollback to a version that included a lot of this text including a reintroduction of errors and phrasing? Anyway, I encourage any and all discussion as to whether this was the right move or not. jps (talk) 13:54, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously not the right move, but I'd prefer if we keep discussing in the above section. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The lead says: "The tradition became more popular among Tibetan exiles after the 14th Dalai Lama's call for the scientific research of the matter."

But the body says: Nothing about the Dalai Lama or his call for research.

Per WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY, we should include a sentence in the body of the article about this fact.

(Since knowing when something was popular is part of ordinary encyclopedic context, I don't think we should expunge all mention of this. An encyclopedia article should say that Beanie Babies were popular in the 1990s, that Peloton Interactive was wildly popular during the pandemic, and that this belief became popular in recent years.)

Does anyone object in principle? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the article is short enough not to repeat the material. The LEADFOLLOWSBODY essay is clearly meant for much longer texts. For the avoidance of doubt, the fact of Dalai Lama calling for research is IMHO very much an encyclopedic material. [User:Викидим|Викидим]] (talk) 19:04, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not important enough to explain anything else about it, then maybe it shouldn't be in the lead paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objection to moving this sentence lower. Викидим (talk) 03:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where would you put it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:46, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the end of "Cultural and religious significance". Викидим (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then perhaps one of you would make that change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have "no objection", but actually prefer the current areangement in the lead. Викидим (talk) 17:34, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]