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U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

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Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#241

Post by untilHellbanned »

elmar wrote: post #100
deftnerd wrote: post #96

Sometimes company leaders have severe problems with ethics. As mentioned in other comments, even YC has had companies that have bundled adware/malware with software, practiced dark patterns, hidden news of security breaches, etc. I tend to see YC as being more "evolved" than other VC's, but I also think that these problems are more ingrained into the human condition. YC could consider making funding contingent on all…

Hacking sometimes puts you in a grey area :) Airbnb: The Growth Story You Didn't Know https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb Airbnb Cofounder Was One Of The Worst Spammers In The World, Says His Freshman Roommate http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-co-founders-freshman-r...

What's interesting about the spammer link is that the YC narrative and everyone thinks about Obama O's and Brian Chesky's hustle making this business. Whereas its clear that mass emailing in the spirit of all publicity is good publicity is what created huge awareness amongst potential customers.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#242

Post by 55555 »

untilHellbanned wrote: post #241
elmar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacking sometimes puts you in a grey area :) Airbnb: The Growth Story You Didn't Know https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb Airbnb Cofounder Was One Of The Worst Spammers In The World, Says His Freshman Roommate http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-co-founders-freshman-r...

What's interesting about the spammer link is that the YC narrative and everyone thinks about Obama O's and Brian Chesky's hustle making this business. Whereas its clear that mass emailing in the spirit of all publicity is good publicity is what created huge awareness amongst potential customers.

Yeah I don't really mind the spam so much, but I really hate when people pollute others' senses of reality with misinformation. If the AirBnB story is all about cereal and photographers walking around NYC, then you teach others to have a less accurate view of reality and you destroy their ability to make good decisions. They will start companies with an unearned sense of optimism, etc.

Go ahead and spam if you're a spammer, but be honest about it.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#243

Post by DougBTX »

School-Cotton wrote: post #175
DougBTX wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is known beforehand that all the participants will answer in the same way, testing 5 will produce as much information as testing 10000, so the question is whether any beforehand assertion like that applies. One reason that assertion might not hold is if the 5 being tested come from a special interest group, knowing if that could be the case or not depends on domain knowledge. http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnot…

You're confusing random variation (which is helped by sample size) and bias (which isn't)

My example in the first paragraph has no random variation to explain how a test of 5 people could provide the same information as a test of 10000.

The second example includes bias as a lead-in to the actual problems that tests of capillary blood need to handle.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#244

Post by SilasX »

gmarx wrote: post #197
rcarrigan87 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if scam is the right word. Everyone is capable of deluding themselves into believing their current, morally questionable actions will be seen as justified in the future (when everything works, out of course). I'm sure even Bernie Madoff believed at some point he would win it all back and no one would ever know or be harmed.

Isn't this just a combination of generally admired startup behavior (fake it til you make it) combined with a business on which people's health might depend? When I read that they were using regular lab test machines to perform the majority of tests, it struck me as pretty much what my YC friends reported as received wisdom- that it's legit to start out doing it "by hand" before you get your tech working.

I think you're absolutely right here -- and I would add the other meme common in that headspace: "No one knows what they're doing", a meme I also hate with a passion.

For all we know, Holmes could have harbored grave doubts about the viability of the tech, based on doing all the right sanity checks. But if she took the meme seriously, "hey, no one else knows what they're doing, no one knows why anything works, they just meander through life and things eventually fall into place. Once you have enough status, you're bulletproof, right?"

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#245

Post by tps5 »

gnaritas wrote: post #195
tps5 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never paid much attention to the details of the Madoff case but I think people on the internet throw out the "sociopath" label way too freely. Not much is gained from that label, in my opinion. And I certainly wouldn't apply it to Bernie Madoff or Holmes based on what I know of their situations.

> but I think people on the internet throw out the "sociopath" label way too freely. Not an argument. > And I certainly wouldn't apply it to Bernie Madoff or Holmes based on what I know of their situations. Not an argument. If you're going to disagree with someone, generally, some logic as to why is useful, not just "I don't agree". Madoff certainly deserves that label, he ruined lives by running the biggest investme…

I would stay away from the term sociopath because whether or not someone is a sociopath depends entirely on their feelings. And it's quite clearly impossible to know the emotions of another person and whether they experienced guilt/remorse/regret/empathy for their actions, regardless of their facial expressions.

I've also read the Nuremberg Diary. That book, and Hannah Arendt's famous phrase "banality of evil" have influenced my thinking in this area. People who do very bad things are not necessarily "less than human" or "exceptionally inhuman," although it's easy to make that assumption.

Anyway, I think the concept of a sociopath is entirely theoretical. Until we can scientifically determine what someone is feeling by hooking them up to a machine and reading their emotions as we present them with various scenarios (i.e. a Voigt-Kampff device) then why even bother throwing around such a sensationalized word?

As far as Madoff goes, I never understood the obsession with branding him as notably evil. He stole a lot of money from a lot of people and lied to a lot of people. But the notoriety of that case has more to do with him being an upstanding member of society i.e. "the last person you would expect" (also the scale of the fraud). I don't believe his theft is morally more egregious than millions of other thefts that are committed every day.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#246

Post by SilasX »

jcranmer wrote: post #172
ryporter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law of physics makes what Theranos attempted to achieve impossible? They were still drawing blood from the patient. Thus, it seems theoretically possible for technology to overcome the challenges the approach presents.

Quoting from a comment on one of Derek Lowe's posts on the subject ( http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/15/the... ) (note that a large fraction of commenters are active chemistry, medical, or biology researchers): > The blood you get from a prick will be a mixture of blood from small venules, small arterioles, capillaries and lymph vessels, mixed with whatever loose tissue and cells have been cut b…

That is evidence of the problem being difficult, not a rigorous "perpetual motion"-level impossibility proof. I could write something similar about a proposal to have computers play chess, based on the absurd blowup in elementary operations (think 1940s) and logic gate resets needed to compute a good move.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#247

Post by atroyn »

drjesusphd wrote: post #235
atroyn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the fusion companies I've seen founded lately are led by people who have been scientists in this field for decades. To which companies of you refer?

I guess I'm thinking about Lockheed Martin and EMC2. They're both taking taxpayer money for discredited approaches (mirror and cusp confinement, respectively).

What are your thoughts on Helion?

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#248

Post by dragonwriter »

SilasX wrote: post #246
jcranmer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting from a comment on one of Derek Lowe's posts on the subject ( http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/10/15/the... ) (note that a large fraction of commenters are active chemistry, medical, or biology researchers): > The blood you get from a prick will be a mixture of blood from small venules, small arterioles, capillaries and lymph vessels, mixed with whatever loose tissue and cells have been cut b…

That is evidence of the problem being difficult , not a rigorous "perpetual motion"-level impossibility proof. I could write something similar about a proposal to have computers play chess, based on the absurd blowup in elementary operations (think 1940s) and logic gate resets needed to compute a good move.

> That is evidence of the problem being difficult, not a rigorous "perpetual motion"-level impossibility proof.

That the uncertainty produced by the source chosen exceeds the acceptable variability in the results is an impossibility proof for a testing method relying exclusively on a single sample from that source having acceptable accuracy, since the accuracy of the test result cannot exceed the accuracy of the source used in representing the underlying measure.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#249

Post by josh_carterPDX »

This is a great example of needing to do more due diligence. Walgreens and all of the investors were swept up by the whole "disruption" rhetoric. They should have spent more time understanding how Holmes and her team were going to handle compliance. It's clear none of that was done. This is what happens when disruption pushes back.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#250

Post by SilasX »

dragonwriter wrote: post #248
SilasX wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is evidence of the problem being difficult , not a rigorous "perpetual motion"-level impossibility proof. I could write something similar about a proposal to have computers play chess, based on the absurd blowup in elementary operations (think 1940s) and logic gate resets needed to compute a good move.

> That is evidence of the problem being difficult, not a rigorous "perpetual motion"-level impossibility proof. That the uncertainty produced by the source chosen exceeds the acceptable variability in the results is an impossibility proof for a testing method relying exclusively on a single sample from that source having acceptable accuracy, since the accuracy of the test result cannot exceed the accuracy of the sour…

Only if you could know in advance that there was no way to filter the input to the point that there is a correlation between the the filtered input and the blood state, which is exactly the point under contention.

For comparison, there is tremendous variation in the sound waves that humans recognize as the word "apple", but there are still systems that can filter out the relevant noise and identify the critical dimensions of variation.

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