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Major Investor Sues Theranos

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Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#211

Post by aswanson »

julianpye wrote: post #6

One thing I find really weird is the choice of CEO photos in media reporting. If there is good news, they chose 'nice', attractive photos. If there is bad news, they look for worse ones. This is true for male and female founders. In this case, everything about this photo is an 'outtake', from hands, choice of framing, facial expression, eyes - it's a photo a photographer would not keep in their image selection.

The most hilarious example of this I've seen is a forbes article where they managed to dig up a picture of Warren Buffet with a psychopath-like expression on his face for some type of investigation a subsidiary company he invested in was under.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#212

Post by nickpsecurity »

davidivadavid wrote: post #156
nickpsecurity wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I see where you're going. There's two ways to look at that, though. One is worrying about her sanity. The other is thinking she's an energetic, ambitious person pushing her product and company. You'll see a lot of what's in the photos if you ever delve into the world of sales teams and marketing execs. ;)

Huh, what? You mean a bit like you would see a lot of autistic neckbeards if you ever delve into the world of software engineering? I can't see how looking crazy with wide open eyes and fake smiles correlates with "sales teams and marketing execs." That's a completely gratuitous caricature.

The profession is about enthusiasm and confidence. So, many people there are constantly smiling, wide-eyed, vigorously shaking your hand like you're their lost brother, telling you how happy you'll be with the product, and so on. Many of them. They're also usually successful to some degree.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#213

Post by nickpsecurity »

mozumder wrote: post #150
nickpsecurity wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just argued that mainstream media has rules, that they problems they bring in are well-understood, and independent media is untrustworthy. You provided evidence for two of them. You did not in any way show mainstream media to be more trustworthy than independent media. If anything, they're clearly not due to all the times they've been caught manipulating their audiences, lying, or even justifying a right to lie.…

> So, the proper response is to do just what honest journalists or even agents in intelligence collection are taught to do: use diverse sources, rate their integrity, identify their biases, and merge them in a way that accounts for the two. That's pretty much what mainstream media does. That's why you see major investigative articles with lots and lots of cross-referenced sources. You know about the Theranos fraud be…

"That's pretty much what mainstream media does. That's why you see major investigative articles with lots and lots of cross-referenced sources."

This is not what the mainstream media does. What it does is start with the biases and goals of the organization that targets the beliefs and wants of particular viewers. The journalists will have run into this trying to get things by editors in the past. Then, they'll begin on their peace which may use any combination of sources to support its claims with little presented for alternative opinions. They even like to cite "anonymous sources" to push total bullshit. They'll then present the story.

Sometimes I see well-researched stories that cover most odds and ends. Most of the time I see them reporting whatever they saw or heard from one source with their own slant. The funny thing about your comments is that even most viewers of these organizations I run into know they're extremely biased. They'll say "What else do you expect from (Huffington Post or Fox News here)? They always push that (liberal/conservative) BS!" They just think the bias of their preferred outlet is correct most of the time. Of course, that's all the info they see too. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#214

Post by jacquesm »

ceterum_censeo wrote: post #210
jacquesm wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't strike me as charitable to take your strong stance that the investors were incompetent based on speculation with the benefit of hindsight. Then please provide some proof that proper DD was done. I haven't seen any , and funny enough, Theranos did not defend itself at all by saying the investors did their own proper DD, which would be the easiest way out for them. > it is entirely possible to do proper DD…

> Then please provide some proof that proper DD was done. If you are stating that "they [investors] failed to do due diligence", then the onus is on you to provide proof that the proper DD was done if you don't want your argument referred to as speculation. I am not drawing a conclusion one way or the other. > The disruption came along one parameter only, the amount of blood required to do the test. That wasn't the o…

So far not a single investor has claimed that their DD team did not have access, that their DD team was competent to do the job in the first place and that the technology as evaluated was sound. You'll note that this whole lawsuit is about claims by the company, not about what they actually had or what the DD team encountered in the lab.

> That wasn't the only disruption and I'm not sure that was the primary one: I would argue the primary disruption was regulatory (using/abusing the LDT framework and consumer-initiated testing).

The technology enabled that. Without the tech that failed to materialize and is not the core of the innovation that Theranos represents.

> I would never use the words trivial and foolproof for anything in medicine or laboratory testing: there is nothing simple about running a comparison between labs, especially for biological samples. Run an identical sample at Quest and Labcorp and the values will differ, perhaps in a statistically-significant way.

Yes, but if you run enough samples then you should converge at something amounting to statistical equivalence. If that doesn't happen then either one of the tests is invalid.

> I agree in that I would expect that proper due diligence should have recommended against an investment in Theranos.

ok. That's probably the most important point anyway.

> Not participating in the scientific community is a giant red flag.

As are secrecy, refusing access to labs, not providing full details on the technology under NDA, refusing to run a sufficient number of blind tests at the request of the DD team. Keep in mind that we're talking about a 100M investment, there isn't a whole lot that you won't be able to do when doing DD for a deal that size.

> I completely disagree that technical DD on the technology platform would necessarily reveal the flaws in Theranos.

If that were true that would mean they had working technology, which they did not have at all. Even for some of the most basic testing they had to fall back on equipment supplied by others and this would have definitely turned up in a real DD, barring magic I don't see how they could have gotten away with it in any realistic setting.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#215

Post by jacquesm »

radu_floricica wrote: post #168
jacquesm wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies. That's why you go there in the first place, if you believe everything they tell you then you're going to get fleeced if they lie. Theranos did not comply with their duty to inform truthfully, but the investors did not comply with their duty to research. Asking the company is not research, the technology being complex…

As far as I followed the story, there was basically double bookkeeping in the technology department. Like the fact that they used classic technology while pretending the results came from their own new tech. There are lies, and there are illegal lies. If you go to the IRS and put in writing a different number, you go to jail. If you go to the bank and get a loan, but you use photoshop to prove your colateral is worth…

> As far as I followed the story, there was basically double bookkeeping in the technology department. Like the fact that they used classic technology while pretending the results came from their own new tech.

This is why I suspect that nobody of the DD team ever went to the lab to have an actual sample (or preferably several of them) tested in their own presence. Which in this case would seem to be the minimum level required for satisfaction given the radical departure from the standard of the time.

Given that Theranos claimed their tech was too secret to share or be peer reviewed anybody that lost money (theirs or others) should look in the mirror for the cause.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#216

Post by logicallee »

M_Grey wrote: post #207
logicallee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to go ahead and disagree. This is journalism and news in 2016. (I'm also including people's blog write-ups that they or others submit.) On tech and fundraising issues, I'd say HN and yhe niche blog posts submitted, do count for a kind of journalism.

Only by throwing the definition of the word out the window to make a point, could that possibly fly.

Fair enough. there's no good word for people giving lots of facts in a blogpost that is meant to be informative, open to comments, includes updates and good-faith efforts to be informative and correct. it may not be journalism, but people read these blog posts and these posts have huge weight. I don't think there's historical precedent for this kind of self-publishing, so not sure the terminology has caught up, but I'll concede your point regarding the specific term 'journalism'.

Would you include in 'journalism' very badly-written articles that are done by a writer collecting or reporting on sources (example: reporting on a tweet and its responses), while using horrific grammar and being very low-quality? You know the kind of link-bait 'articles' I'm talking about - I wonder if you would consider that part of journalism or not.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#217

Post by pavs »

camillomiller wrote: post #162
conjectures wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the way Holmes is perceived publicly ...which presumably is almost entirely based on what they read or see in the media?

Do you know any other way of forming a public opinion about someone you've never met and probably never will?

There is a difference between news reporting and manipulating public perception. Let the public make up their mind, just give them the dry facts.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#218

Post by draw_down »

jupiter90000 wrote: post #80

If one assumes Holmes didn't realize their product didn't work (questionable at best), imagine how it must be to work 7 days a week, forego friendships and intimate relationships, and not even watch TV, then after 12 years of that discover what you tried to make didn't/won't work. In too deep or something to just admit it's over and move on. Sounds like a very undesirable number of years with little positive to show,…

Imagine how it must feel to wake up every day missing your spouse because he killed himself.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#219

Post by mozumder »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #213
mozumder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, the proper response is to do just what honest journalists or even agents in intelligence collection are taught to do: use diverse sources, rate their integrity, identify their biases, and merge them in a way that accounts for the two. That's pretty much what mainstream media does. That's why you see major investigative articles with lots and lots of cross-referenced sources. You know about the Theranos fraud be…

"That's pretty much what mainstream media does. That's why you see major investigative articles with lots and lots of cross-referenced sources." This is not what the mainstream media does. What it does is start with the biases and goals of the organization that targets the beliefs and wants of particular viewers. The journalists will have run into this trying to get things by editors in the past. Then, they'll begin…

Why would anyone support independent media's biases over mainstream media's biases?

So I take it you don't want to thank mainstream media for uncovering the Theranos fraud?

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#220

Post by FireBeyond »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
onion2k wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investor's argument is that Theranos lied . The investor believes Theranos fraudulently produced evidence that their product worked in order to fake the responses to the investor's due diligence. If that's true, and the investor can prove it, then that's not simply part of the typical risk of investing, that makes the investor the victim of a serious crime.

That's a dumb argument then. See, when you do due diligence you should assume that the company lies. That's why you go there in the first place, if you believe everything they tell you then you're going to get fleeced if they lie. Theranos did not comply with their duty to inform truthfully, but the investors did not comply with their duty to research. Asking the company is not research, the technology being complex…

"It's not as if there is accounting with double bookkeeping that was withheld from you"

If you present results that are cherry picked, or problematic in how they were obtained, how much of a practical difference is there to your example?

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