A creationist, by name Dimitri Kouznetsov, from Russia, toured Australia some years ago under the auspices of the Creation Science Foundation (now Answers in Genesis). He was much lauded by the faithful, and it was claimed that he became a creationist before he became a Christian. Among the publicity it was claimed that he was on the editorial board of three scientific journals.

When people investigated they couldn’t find two of the journals, so they started to dig further. One of them looked at the remaining journal, where he was listed on the Editorial Board. One issue had a paper by Kouznetsov, and the person looking at it thought some of the information was a bit suspicious, and tried to get hold of a cited reference for the data.

The journal couldn’t be found in any library!

On further investigation it appeared that Kouznetsov had fabricated at least seven of the references in the paper!

How did this get through the referees?

It seems that papers submitted by one of the editors received only a cursory review, since it was assumed that anyone on the editorial board would be competent and follow the standard procedures.

A paper was subsequently published in the same journal drawing people’s attention to Kouznetsov’s errors.

He (Kouznetsov) has now disappeared from the creationist scene.

Ken Smith

December 2002