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The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

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Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#71

Post by GavinMcG »

hristov wrote: post #18

That is a heartening example of good journalism. But nevertheless, there is one thing that I did not like with the way Ms Gold handled the story. She had an idea in mind of what kind of story she was going to write, and when reality did not pan out according to her plan, she just decided not to write the story. If she had written about her experience she would have had a very important story and could have saved inve…

The problem is she didn't necessarily have a story there, either, at least without an order of magnitude more research, at a minimum.

She went in for a light piece humanizing a new technology. Do you really expect her to shift gears into a massive fraud, with nothing more than weird PR pressure and a fire alarm?

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#72

Post by meddevthrowaway »

baldajan wrote: post #51
misiti3780 wrote: post #32

I have an honest question, what is the end game for Theranos employees. My understanding is the company is a complete fraud but yet if I go on linkedin they still have 200+ employees working there: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent... are all of these people going to be fired in the coming months or do investors think this is still a good idea but Holmes isnt going to be apart of it ?

I think at this point, investors are trying to salvage what ever tech it has, and sell the company. No clue why employees are sticking around, maybe they’re currently looking for another job and it’s a slow drop to zero.

Employees are looking around. I've interviewed more of them than I can count. At this point most of the good people are gone.

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#74

Post by rdiddly »

danso wrote: post #4

Someone needs to make an anthology of first-person stories about trying out Theranos. I actually thought the OP article was by John Carreyrou because I saw it in his tweets (and it makes sense that they'd pull the fire alarm upon seeing him), but it's by a reporter (Jenny Gold) from Kaiser Health News, who apparently visited there (Nov 2014) before Carreyrou's WSJ investigation was published in October 2015. The only…

I note an interesting stubbornness in all three of your links, where each writer seems determined to carry on with their preordained mission of fellating Theranos in print, even after smelling something fishy. Depressing indictment of journalists and journalism. The NPR reporter at least had the nerve to cancel the feature. Though redoubling her efforts into an even fiercer and more thorough investigation would have been great.

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#75

Post by swang »

hristov wrote: post #18

That is a heartening example of good journalism. But nevertheless, there is one thing that I did not like with the way Ms Gold handled the story. She had an idea in mind of what kind of story she was going to write, and when reality did not pan out according to her plan, she just decided not to write the story. If she had written about her experience she would have had a very important story and could have saved inve…

come on. this is the post of a person who has a bit of a hindsight bias. if only she published this article the wsj wouldn't have had to publish theirs and theranos would have been immediately outed!

or... maybe she writes this story. says something to the effect of, "Hmm a bit WEIRD? What's Theranos hiding?" and then all the VCs and tech people start accusing her of having an agenda against Theranos.

without any hindsight, what is the story?

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#76

Post by ryacko »

jonathanyc wrote: post #50

Is there an industry of “black hat PR” people that handle this sort of thing? Would be really interested if there were any autobiographical novels from that sort of person, though I suppose, like bank robbers, their success insists they remain unknown. EDIT: Just remembered the movie Wag the Dog the Wikipedia article calls the black hat PR people portrayed therein “spin doctors”. But that seems more like just PR to m…

Dirty tricks.

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#77

Post by postsantum »

jayess wrote: post #52
DoreenMichele wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you have heard of the Overton Window?* You essentially can't publish it if it a. Falls too far outside what the public will readily believe and b. Is not adequately backed up with verifiable hard facts. Speculation that they intentionally pulled the fire alarm would have been considered mudslinging and yellow journalism at the time the research was done. It's print-worthy now because we now know that Theranos d…

As a side note, I've started seeing the term "Overton window" more often. It's a bit shocking because I knew Joe Overton (his untimely death was a gigantic loss). It's kinda cool to see it used in general discourse now.

In Russia this concept was widely used a couple of years ago. Somebody published a popular article distorting the idea to the point of becoming a conspiracy theory against our moral values. Along with so-called "Dulles Doctrine" it became part of western conspiracy lore

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#78

Post by mkesper »

avs733 wrote: post #70
danso wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seems to be the oldest post on HN (Sept 8 2013, 211 upvotes, 113 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349 It doesn't feel that much more skeptical than typical HN threads about new companies. And skepticism/confusion was going to be more prevalent given how few HN users (relatively speaking) are in the health field. Funny enough, if you scroll down far enough, you run into a comment that sounds like…

I'm not there comment you referene, but for around three or four years I have been using theranos' board as a teaching tool in undergraduate entrepreneurship courses.

You mean teaching what not to do, I hope?

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#79

Post by baxtr »

aaavl2821 wrote: post #29
danso wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos is an interesting case. Benedict Evans tweeted something interesting the other week [0], how Theranos, unlike virtually every other Silicon Valley startups, was very East Coast in style. Particularly with its board full of old, famous politicians and DC figures like Kissinger and General Mattis. I didn't really hear much about it until the WSJ blowup, but my perception was that Theranos wasn't in whatever sc…

From what I understand theranos pitched a lot of the traditional life sci and even tech VCs, but these firms were very skeptical. Especially the biotech VCs do a ton of scientific / technical diligence before investing and theranos almost certainly wouldn't have made it through their diligence filter I think a few notable VCs actually spoke out critically of theranos, can't recall which, but it is saying something if…

That’s generally a bad signal, whenever in-industry VCs stay out of a business and outside-industry VCs go in. Bad signal

Re: The Tale of Theranos and the Mysterious Fire Alarm

#80

Post by thaumasiotes »

mkesper wrote: post #78
avs733 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not there comment you referene, but for around three or four years I have been using theranos' board as a teaching tool in undergraduate entrepreneurship courses.

You mean teaching what not to do, I hope?

Huh? The board was a major success, the only thing Theranos had going for it.
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