Brendan McKay (mathematician)

[9][10][11] Their rebuttal, together with a paper written by an anonymous mathematician, argued that the patterns in the Bible that supposedly indicate some hidden message from a divine source or have predictive power can be just as easily found in other works, such as War and Peace.

"[13] In response, McKay employed the same Bible decryption method described by Rips' group, quickly found some nine references to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in Herman Melville's masterpiece.

He also showed that the same technique allowed him to find ostensible mentions not only of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, JFK, and Abraham Lincoln[8] but also references to Diana, Princess of Wales, her lover Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur Henri Paul in the same novel.

[15] This debunking disproof of a theory that the bible encrypts secret messages containing future world history achieved international fame for McKay outside of his specific field of combinatorics.

According to Karsh, McKay was offered a co-author credit in the Middle East Quarterly article but he declined on the grounds of having a low opinion of the publication.