Issues with “Hunger makes a thief of any man”: Poverty and crime in British colonial Asia

[CristianCantoro]

Hi Matt,

First of all, thank you for this project.

Using PubPeer, a website for open post-publication peer review, I have noticed some issues related to a paper in the punitive versus preventive strategy table. In the row "There have been a string of break-ins in your neighborhood," the preventive strategy cites this paper under "Deal with poverty": “Hunger makes a thief of any man”: Poverty and crime in British colonial Asia.

It appears that this paper may have some issues, quoting from the paper's discussion thread on PubPeer:

This article corresponds to Chapter 4 of the author's PhD thesis.

In 2019, Wageningen University retracted his PhD degree because of data fabrication and falsification in four chapters of his PhD thesis, chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5. The university will contact the editors of the journals to retract the corresponding articles.

I have reviewed - to the best of my ability, given that the originals are in Dutch - the links in the thread, including the thesis page on Wageningen University's repository, which confirms that the thesis has been retracted.

Given the circumstances, I suggest that you review this paper as well. As things stand, I think it is better to remove the paper from the sources for the project.