Is there truth to the philosophy that you should sync; sync; sync; sync?

When I was first introduced to Linux, working at Cisco Systems in 2000, I was taught the merits of the sync command, used to flush buffers to disk to prevent filesystem corruption / data loss. I was told not only by coworkers there, but by friends in college to always run sync "a few" or "a bunch" of times, that is, maybe 5 - 10 times, instead of just once. I've continued this habit ever since, but, is there any merit to this? Has anyone else ever heard this? And most importantly, can anyone provide good rationale / empirical evidence for/against the idea that you need to run sync more than once for it to be effective?