Live data from Hacker News

Major Investor Sues Theranos

wsj.com

231–234 of 234 posts

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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. This doesn't tell us one way or the other if DD took place and if so, the scope. > The technology enabled that. Without the tech that failed to materialize and is not the core of the innovation that Theranos represents. The…

"Ok, let's run these samples I have here through your Edison 1.0 machine and see what the results are.".

At that point they could stall, pretend the machine isn't currently working (ok, I'll be back later), that processing samples and preparation takes a really long time (ok, I'll wait) (which would be dissonant with the turn around time for the results claimed in their publications, see 'breakthrough in instant diagnosis') and so on.

At some point the rubber will have to meet the road and they'll have to stick a sample into their machine and give up the results and that really is all you need.

As for unsupervised access to the labs, that wasn't what I intended to say with 'access', just access, to verify that what they claim their processes are are indeed the processes as practiced.

> Unlike uBeam, there doesn't seem to be fundamental reasons to believe that Theranos' platform could not work and microfluidics being known to the art is supportive.

Agreed, maybe it could work, but there is no proof that it ever did work, and the company has admitted the results were invalid:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-18/elizabeth-holmes-ad...

And that's a huge difference. For uBeam the physics just isn't there, for Theranos there was a lot of skepticism about sample variability when you are using that little fluid drawn in that particular way.

But if any or all the components in that chain don't work then the chain won't work and the impression Theranos has made to the world is that it all worked.

> If there are fundamental reasons that the technology cannot work, or if you have good hard sources for what Theranos had working and when, please do share!

Yes, of course I have that, but you're going to just have to believe me, after all, why hold me to a higher standard than Theranos ;)? This is too secret to share, even with fellow participants on message boards and I'm not even asking for your money.

Kidding aside, what Theranos had working (if anything was working at all, my assumption based on their own admission is that it did not work at all beyond the simplest proof of concept) and when they had this on a timeline with their messaging to both investors, customers, employees and board members besides Holmes is a document that their investors would kill for right now. Some of that information is public or known to specific parties but it would take an insider leak or something to that effect to fill in the blanks.

Theranos has done a lot of damage to other companies trying to improve the world of medical diagnostics, that's an aspect that is far worse than any funds lost by investors.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#232
post #95
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implying that staying inside the "mainstream" journalistic integrity suddenly improving is a false assumption. I don't know that I agree with it, but it's a valid opinion to have that mainstream is no better than elsewhere.

I addressed someone's implication, I didn't offer one of my own.

And my interpretation of their implication differed to yours, as I explained.

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot: 4. It's a horrible photograph that makes the photographer look incompetent.

You clearly don't know anything about the news photo business or photojournalism for that matter. It's not grip-and-grin posed ribbon cuttings and staged portraits for annual reports. It's photojournalism. An AP wire story written quickly about an explosion isn't going to have the literary gravitas of James Joyce. That doesn't mean that the AP writer is 'incompetent.' They're doing completely different work. Rarely y…

Well in this case, David Paul Morris (in his own tag) bills himself as a "portrait photographer".

  http://davidpaulmorris.com/

Re: Major Investor Sues Theranos

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen any proof that DD was done at all - to date, this may change - but if the scope didn't at least include a review of the core technology then it was too narrow.

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. I agree that they would be negligent if they did not run DD with a scope that included a review of the Theranos platform technology and implemented devices, but it is entirely possible to do proper DD and be fooled by a skilled charlatan.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN