I recently discovered, to my delighted surprise, that my bachelor thesis had been cited in another bachelor thesis - however...
- my bachelor thesis has been entered in the reference list as an PhD thesis, which it clearly isn't, and
- I have been attributed a conclusion that I didn't draw, that is indeed counter-indicated by the data I've collected.
Should I care about this? Is there a course of action I should take?
Answer
A bachelor's thesis is only a bachelor's thesis - it may be used as a source by other researchers (or students, as you discovered), but it is commonly agreed on that they are certainly not error-free. At least some universities do not even have a process for allowing the student to submit a corrected version for archival after the review by the examiners. Hence, such errors would still be in the thesis even if found by the reviewers.
The misattribution of your thesis as a PhD thesis should be ignored, as it is likely a simple error. Also, it the author used BibTeX, the author of the other thesis may have had the problem that there is no Bachelor's thesis entry type - and rather than doing the right thing (using entry type "misc"), the author went to use the entry type "PhD thesis".
Misrepresenting your conclusion is a bit more problematic, but may very easily be again a simple error. Either you let it slip, or you write the thesis author an e-mail clarifying your conclusions. Either way, don't accuse, just inform - the misinterpretation is often just accidental, which is not misconduct, but just sloppiness. There is also the possibility that some of the text in your thesis invites misunderstanding it, which led to the present problem. Again, this would not be a case of academic misconduct.
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