The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press • Hacker News Board

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#71

Post by MBCook » Tue, May 03, 2016, 3:28 AM UTC

jamesash wrote: post #27

spaceflunky wrote: post #2

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…

Surprised by the downvotes. Promoting Holmes as the next Jobs gave the tech press a chance to show how it was trumpeting diversity and gender balance in its coverage of founders. To those that downvoted - would you completely disagree that this played a role here?

> The media is 100% to blame

implies that nothing happened here but the media overhyped someone. While clearly true, and I have no doubt having a young female entrepreneur was a good angle, that's not the story.

If anyone promised what Theranos promised it would be a big story. Could have been a 73 year old Doctor. No big needle draws? Tons of tests right at the doctors office? No more slow giant labs? A big breakthrough like that is NEWS.

Having a female founder was just one more bullet on the 'cool story' checklist. The hype would have been there without the female founder angle the OP focused on.

Saying the media is 100% to blame also absolves Theranos, its board, and its founder. Even when being overhyped they shouldn't have lied. They shouldn't have hidden things. They could have acted MUCH better.

They could have not sold their services while knowing they didn't work.

Absolute best case: they were wrong about how good their machines. But due to hype they kept trying and thought 'we can fix this before were caught'. And it just snowballed and snowballed.

I'll also point out the end of the comment tends to imply that women run companies into the ground or aren't qualified to succeed since all anecdotes are of failures.

For my anecdote: I've heard companies tend to elect women to be CEOs when there is basically nothing left to lose and saving the company is nearly impossible. Because by that point they figure it doesn't matter they don't have the 'best', some other proven CEO that happens to usually be a guy.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#72

Post by spaceflunky » Tue, May 03, 2016, 3:37 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #51

spaceflunky wrote: post #2

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…

> Marissa Mayer was hailed a hero before crashing and burning Did she? Or was she handed the reins to the Titanic and then vilified when it still sank? Could anyone have saved Yahoo? Would they have taken that job?

Marissa Mayer the executive definitely crashed a burned. She created no value for Yahoo. There isn't even one Yahoo success during her entire tenure that she is responsible. Marissa Mayer spent $2.3billion dollar on completely worthless startups.

Marissa Mayer got lucky at Google and will never get lucky again. She will never do anything important in tech again.

Could anyone save Yahoo? I don't know, but there are certainly people that could have done a better job than Marissa Mayer.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#73

Post by jrochkind1 » Tue, May 03, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

malz wrote: post #25

clorenzo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was featured in this one: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/12/t-magazine/eli...

Which was followed by an admission of the conflict of interest in running a tech-hype story written by the wife of a wealthy VC. http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/conflict-of...

This is some incredibly bizarre reasoning from the T editor:

> it was my mistake in not asking her if there were any potential conflicts. This was an oversight on my part. I say this not as an excuse, but she is, separately from her husband, a billionaire (making her through marriage a billionaire twice over) and for that reason I think I failed to consider any monetary conflict in her case.

She assumes that rich people have no 'monetary conflict' [of interest]? What?

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#74

Post by eecsninja » Tue, May 03, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #67

duaneb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see the tie to sex/gender. Yes, it's a compelling angle, but I don't see it dominating the offering as interesting. Theranos has been pitched as revolutionary without even mentioning the founder--I only learned about her long after the skepticism hit hard.

The attractive, charismatic female founder is what makes the story irresistible to the press. There still would have been Theranos stories in the business press if the founder had been a middle-aged guy, but the number of stories would have been smaller and the adulation would have been less.

Holmes is not attractive.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#75

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, May 03, 2016, 3:59 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #58

FussyZeus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? Seriously, can I get a link on that one?

Of course no one is going to come out and admit that Ian Gibbons's suicide was caused by anything other than the "health and other problems" insinuated by Theranos's PR flack. Also we have to treat every suicide as a tragic failure of mental healthcare availability, rather than (occasionally) a rational reaction to intolerable circumstances. Gibbons was a top biochemist, hired away from academia with the copious comb…

I don't know anything about Gibbons or his suicide. Going off of what you said though, just because he failed at the (impossible) job he was hired to do and committed suicide doesn't mean Holmes "drove him to commit suicide." He may have been working under immense pressure. At the same time, he most likely knew the difficulty of his task when he accepted the job. He was, after all, a top biochemist. Right?

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#76

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, May 03, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #65

duaneb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see the tie to sex/gender. Yes, it's a compelling angle, but I don't see it dominating the offering as interesting. Theranos has been pitched as revolutionary without even mentioning the founder--I only learned about her long after the skepticism hit hard.

> Theranos has been pitched as revolutionary without even mentioning the founder That is false. Almost every profile of Theranos doubles as a profile of Elizabeth, complete with photo shoots of her in her signature black turtleneck (after all, there is no actual technology to be shown) and the statement that she's the youngest self-made female billionaire.

The black turtleneck itself is no accident or coincidence. It's a carefully calculated wardrobe choice meant to invoke images of the late Steve Jobs.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#77

Post by untog » Tue, May 03, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #73

malz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was followed by an admission of the conflict of interest in running a tech-hype story written by the wife of a wealthy VC. http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/conflict-of...

This is some incredibly bizarre reasoning from the T editor: > it was my mistake in not asking her if there were any potential conflicts. This was an oversight on my part. I say this not as an excuse, but she is, separately from her husband, a billionaire (making her through marriage a billionaire twice over) and for that reason I think I failed to consider any monetary conflict in her case. She assumes that rich peo…

I think what they are saying is that she is independently wealthy - as such they didn't check into her husband in the same way they would have if she depended on him for money.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#78

Post by ShitlordVader » Tue, May 03, 2016, 4:14 AM UTC

She worked as an undergraduate in a Stanford microfluidics laboratory and happened to know a venture capitalist who was the original angel investor in Theranos. She is not the wozniak she is the Jobs because she can play the media and use them to help the company raise capital. Moving microfludics from academia into business is a great thing. The culprit is that the journalists did not even bother doing the bare minimum of background reading on the technology Theranos is using.

I wish the media would ask how much of the market share the company will have and if they plan on expanding beyond Walgreens. Also there were rumors that small amounts of blood easily coagulate. If that is true then do they plan on using a blood thinner or fractionating the blood in a centrifuge and then testing it? How much uncertainty do they have in each of the tests they are performing on one drop of blood? Do they have enough capital to narrow the uncertainty? Are they having problems with the FDA approving their testing? What will happen to all the medical lab techs? Will they be let go or is blood testing only a small part of what lab techs do? Instead we get articles on gender, turtle necks and start up culture...

http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab-on-a-chip

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#79

Post by jamesash » Tue, May 03, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #71

jamesash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised by the downvotes. Promoting Holmes as the next Jobs gave the tech press a chance to show how it was trumpeting diversity and gender balance in its coverage of founders. To those that downvoted - would you completely disagree that this played a role here?

> The media is 100% to blame implies that nothing happened here but the media overhyped someone. While clearly true, and I have no doubt having a young female entrepreneur was a good angle, that's not the story. If anyone promised what Theranos promised it would be a big story. Could have been a 73 year old Doctor. No big needle draws? Tons of tests right at the doctors office? No more slow giant labs? A big breakthr…

Thank you for explaining your point of view. Helpful.

Re: The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

#80

Post by jessaustin » Tue, May 03, 2016, 5:35 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #75

jessaustin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course no one is going to come out and admit that Ian Gibbons's suicide was caused by anything other than the "health and other problems" insinuated by Theranos's PR flack. Also we have to treat every suicide as a tragic failure of mental healthcare availability, rather than (occasionally) a rational reaction to intolerable circumstances. Gibbons was a top biochemist, hired away from academia with the copious comb…

I don't know anything about Gibbons or his suicide. Going off of what you said though, just because he failed at the (impossible) job he was hired to do and committed suicide doesn't mean Holmes "drove him to commit suicide." He may have been working under immense pressure. At the same time, he most likely knew the difficulty of his task when he accepted the job. He was, after all, a top biochemist. Right?

Probably most people could justify a failed six-month project to themselves with, "you live, you learn". A decade of one's "most productive years" hurts quite a bit more. That decade looks a lot different in retrospect than it did when Holmes was selling it.

I'm not saying I would have done the same, in the same position. Then again, if I were the type to feel such a failure so keenly, I'd be more likely to be a top biochemist in the first place. Both parties were adults. The point of this thread is that Holmes ought to be treated as such.