A Russian scientist alleges that a Russian inventor with strong political ties who claims landmark scientific advances is a con artist offering only pseudoscience.

The Wall Street Journal was told by physicist Eduard Kruglyakov, who heads a Russian Academy of Sciences commission that exposes pseudoscience that Viktor Petrik, whose professed discoveries include a cell that generates electricity when you breathe on it, a way of producing silicon for computer chips from fertilizer waste and a filter that cleans the toxins and the color from red wine -- is "a master of bluff." Kruglyakov alleges that some of Petrik's claims are scientifically impossible and others are borrowed from legitimate researchers.

Kruglyakov said," He hasn't discovered anything."

The Journal further said that Petrik, who is also the co-author of a 2009 patent for a filter he claims can turn radioactive waste into safe drinking water, dismisses his scholastic detractors as resentful and narrow-minded.

He told the newspaper that "I'm not restricted by the boundaries" of traditional scientific disciplines, adding that most of his breakthroughs come while he is in a state of self-hypnosis.

The Journal further said that Petrik has high-level support from the ruling United Russia political party and Russian Parliament Speaker Boris Gryzlov, but neither the party nor Gryzlov nor Petrik will talk to the newspaper about the relationship.

Petrik does talk about visiting former U. S. President George H. W. Bush in Texas in 2004 to discuss his technology for cleaning groundwater.

Adding he hopes to meet with Bush again in a few months, Petrik says," When we met, Bush knew a lot about me already." (With Input from Agencies)