What Happens When a Korean Woman Scholar Names the Creativity Crisis the Field Refuses to See

Newsweek’s 2010 cover story, “The Creativity Crisis,” documented a measurable decline in creativity based on Torrance Tests data from 272,599 participants. Its reach bypassed conventional gatekeepers; popularity arrived without permission, and they have never forgiven it. A decade later, the Journal of Creative Behavior’s editorial gatekeepers sought to erase both the crisis and the Korean woman scholar who exposed it by publishing Barbot and Said-Metwaly’s (2021) critique of Kim (2011c). Their article alleged—falsely—that Kim omitted effect sizes, age-level analyses, Form B use, and data extraction procedures. It rested on inflated claims, unfounded inferences, denial of empirical findings through distorted graphs, and 44 documented distortions across 31 citations—including fabrication, mischaracterization, and misleading attribution—that few would expect from leading scholars, yet were shielded by the editorial process, recasting the Creativity Crisis as a “myth” and societal harm. The opposite is true: evidence spurred educators and reformers to engage constructively, inspiring curricular innovation, accountability, and momentum to reverse the decline. When the critique appeared online, months before official publication, leading figures publicly celebrated its arrival, declaring the crisis fabricated by Kim and Newsweek, celebrating the silencing of a Korean woman’s voice. This rebuttal corrects the record by addressing age-specific data structures, statistical and graphical misrepresentations, p-value logic, and misuse of cross-temporal meta-analysis and TTCT scores that ignore post-2012 scoring changes. It shows how editorial gatekeeping and racialized exclusion obstruct scientific debate, underscoring the importance of ethical publishing and dissenting voices. Science does not progress by denying crises, but by confronting them.