Talk:Judge Lu

"body swap"?
Pace Ren Xiaoping, a head transplant is different from a body swap. A two-way brain transplant would qualify, but a one-way change is not a "swap". jnestorius(talk) 00:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

First?
The DYK hook was:


 * ... that according to Ren Xiaoping, the first reference to a body swap occurs in the Chinese short story "Judge Lu", in which the titular character performs a head transplant on his friend's wife?

The Judge Lu story is dated 1766 but according to body swap appearances in media, they were "first popularized in anglo-saxon culture by the personal identity chapter of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding." and that was earlier in 1689. This issue was posted at WP:ERRORS but there was no response in the brief time it was up. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)


 * It's very possible that Ren is mistaken/has a COI/etc. but it is not in our place to "debunk" what a source says using another unrelated source (that does not mention this story at all) - in my opinion that borders on original research KINGofLETTUCE 👑  🥬 15:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ren is a surgeon not a historian or literary scholar. In any case, their claim starts by discounting previous "religious" examples even though the story is obviously a fantasy about a demon too.  As it's a weak claim, I have removed it altogether.  Even Locke isn't first in this field – see Switching Heads and Cultures which goes back to the year 1070. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * , you're dead wrong. A critical part of our job as editors is to evaluate source reliability. A given source is not 100% reliable or 100% reliable -- reliability may need to be judged separately for each of various statements the source makes, and "first" claims need especially close scrutiny; see Template:Did you know nominations/Atomitat. Having said all that, given Ren Xiaoping's stature I think a qualified "according to" statement is OK. Many physicians do serious historical and cultural research in their area of specialty; for example . EEng 22:52, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That is true, I was referring more to Andrew's act of stitching together the two sources to read something like "X says (false statement)[1], but in xxxx there was an earlier instance of such a story[2]." I think that as an attempt at "debunking" what Ren says is original research. And the "according to" stuff was my edit after all, wasn't it? :) But I'm not too fussed about removing it altogether. KINGofLETTUCE 👑  🥬 23:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)