Michael Drosnin (January 31, 1946 – June 9, 2020) was an American journalist and author, best known for his work on the Bible Code, a series of best-selling books in which he claims that secret messages can be found in the Hebrew text of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) using a specialized form of statistical analysis.
Drosnin’s first book on this subject, “The Bible Code,” was published in 1997. In it, he asserts that by applying a skip-code technique (skipping equidistant letters) to the Torah’s text, one can uncover prophetic messages hidden within. These messages, according to Drosnin, have predicted historical events such as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Prime Minister of Israel.
His work and claims have been highly controversial. Critics, including many scholars and statisticians, have argued that the methodology used to find these “codes” is flawed and that similar patterns could be found in any sufficiently long text. They contend that Drosnin’s interpretations are examples of confirmation bias, where he finds patterns that fit his hypotheses while ignoring those that do not.