Horizon

Twice

Is the number of times you must repeat a falsehood before people start to believe it, according to this Grail Code entry. Christopher Bailey — an Arthurian scholar justifiably torqued at Dan Brown — even gives step-by-step instructions:

First I make a ridiculously false statement, like the one about Constantine striking three days out of February. Then, under a different name, I make the same statement in another book, citing the first book as my source in a footnote.

Now I’ve made the statement true, because it’s based on research. (“His research is impeccable,” one reviewer said of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.) Other books can cite my second book, and still other books can cite the other books, and so on. Will any of them ever try to figure out where the original statement came from? Of course not. It’s in a book, and the book has a footnote. What more do you need?