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Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal. Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right track.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote about UBeam here.[1] It's come up several times on YC, and most readers are skeptical. The megahertz ultrasound part can't work in air; attenuation goes up rapidly with frequency, which is why megahertz ultrasound isn't used much. Their patents talk about 75 KHz, which propagates OK in air. But the sound levels they talk about are insane. Their numbers imply a few kilowatts of power going in. You do not want…
There's a whole lot of people who want there to be a successful female entrepreneur so badly that they're willing to give a rising star the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't help that most members of this cheerleading squad seem to have little more than a middle school level understanding of physics or biology, and no desire to dive into the science before heaping praise on the charlatan of the hour.
Investigative tech journalism is a very rare beast, and always seems to come from major media outlets taking an interest in tech, not tech media outlets taking an interest in actually investigating something.
It's kind of funny seeing this on a day when three traditional news outlets are screwing the pooch on the whole Craig Wright/Satoshi debacle.
That is the first thing that came to mind when I read this headline. The BBC article this morning on Craig Wright was embarrassing.
It's worth noting that The New York Times, where Nick Bilton worked previously, did not write any articles about Theranos/Holmes. (I checked) The discussion about the suspiciously positive press strongly resembles uBeam ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/ ): the wunderkind founder, the game changing product. But no practical proof of concept and a weak defense when others point out it violates the laws…
She was featured in this one: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/12/t-magazine/eli...
http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/conflict-of...
She'll be stained forever by this, her name and Theranos are practically interchangeable at this point.
The media is 100% to blame here... I think in large part because of how they treat female entrepreneurs, with well-meaning, but harmful attitudes. IMO we live in a world where there are too few successful female entrepreneurs and at the same time people are very eager to see that world change. So as a result, if there is any inkling of a successful female entrepreneur, that story gets gobbled up by the press ad nause…
> After two months of being stonewalled by the Theranos P.R. team, Carreyrou told me an entourage of lawyers arrived at the Journal’s Midtown Manhattan offices at one P.M. on June 23. Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal. Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right track.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote about UBeam here.[1] It's come up several times on YC, and most readers are skeptical. The megahertz ultrasound part can't work in air; attenuation goes up rapidly with frequency, which is why megahertz ultrasound isn't used much. Their patents talk about 75 KHz, which propagates OK in air. But the sound levels they talk about are insane. Their numbers imply a few kilowatts of power going in. You do not want…
There's a whole lot of people who want there to be a successful female entrepreneur so badly that they're willing to give a rising star the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't help that most members of this cheerleading squad seem to have little more than a middle school level understanding of physics or biology, and no desire to dive into the science before heaping praise on the charlatan of the hour.
> After two months of being stonewalled by the Theranos P.R. team, Carreyrou told me an entourage of lawyers arrived at the Journal’s Midtown Manhattan offices at one P.M. on June 23. Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal. Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right track.
Newspapers struggle to pay the bills, though. If it looks like a lawsuit will cost a lot of money, many papers will just walk. It also increases the cost of fact checking the story.