The West Sepik Gnau were never in Guam and other factual errors!

Abstract

In the literature on reference accuracy in science and medicine (e.g. see Poyer 1979; Siebers and Holt 2000; Ravendran 2003), attention is virtually restricted to bibliographic errors regarding names and initials of authors, title of article, journal title, year, volume, page numbers, and so on. It seems to me that such errors can be considered minor, or of a first degree, in relation to higher echelon desiderata that a published author should not only give other authors proper credit where credit is due, but accurately represent and at least competently –if not masterfully– discuss their work. To continue my simple classification, reference errors of a second degree can be said to occur when an author discusses another’s (cited) work in a way that reveals that s/he has not entirely understood –at all levels of meaning and nuance– what the latter author intended to communicate. Finally, there are yet more serious errors, of a third degree, that fully and persistently misrepresent the work of others. I am sorry to inform the editors of Chungara that some third degree reference errors have appeared in three articles published in the volume 32, number 2 issue on syphilis in the Americas (viz. Reinhard et al. 2000; Rothschild and Rothschild 2000; Saunders et al. 2000). These three articles contain misrepresentations of published and unpublished articles and reports. The first misrepresentation concerns the antiquity and ethnohistorical documentation of yaws in Guam:

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