Upon placing a head item such as a wither skull in water it turns into a survival version.

no

Don't know what you mean by this, but I found a (maybe) similar bug due to heads.

drt is just trolling ._.

I tested those steps and that did not occur. Like I said however I found a different issue and hopefully fixing that will fix the issue you are having.

@drtshock No what?

@turt2live I'll explain more.

1. Go to creative.
2. Place a head somewhere
3. Put water on it
4. The head will drop and you can now pick it up in survival mode.