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We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

nautil.us

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Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#71

Post by Rapzid »

kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

Reminds me of the doomed OnLive. Anyone who knew anything about the internet and latency was speaking out about the impossibility of it ever being a suitable experience from a latency perspective. Concerns were just treated as alternative facts at the time.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#72

Post by cepth »

tptacek wrote: post #57
cepth wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timeline/impact is a bit murkier. Carreyou had two big revelations. One was that Theranos was not running blood tests on their proprietary machines, which were supposed to do finger prick draws. The other was that Theranos had submitted fraudulent validation data to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and state regulatory bodies. They did a couple brazenly unethical and illegal things. 1) CMS subc…

Right, but doesn't the whole Tyler Schultz timeline feed right into Carreyrou's first article? Schultz was one of Carreyrou's star sources; the back quarter of the book basically documents Theranos' retaliation against Schultz.

I think we may be talking past each other here. I just wanted to say in the previous comment that Theranos was already on the radar of the FDA and other regulators prior to the publication of that first article. Early complaints of Phoenix-area doctors about bizarre Theranos test results had already reached regulators by the time Carreyrou went to press.

If what you meant was simply that the FDA launched enforcement action after the publication of the article, then my apologies. No argument from me there.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#73

Post by fragsworth »

jcranmer wrote: post #68
kumarvvr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so much hate for Tesla? Maybe Elon is over confident, over enthusiastic, short sighted, etc. but his vision is world class and world changing. And he has delivered, consistently.

Substitute Elon Musk and Tesla (particularly back in 2017) with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos back in 2014, before the big exposés started coming out. From the perspective of the lay investor, what distinguishes the two cases? This goes to answer both your comment and (at present) the top comment of this post, which asks why people ignore a chorus of naysayers saying that what's being done is impossible. The entire m…

This same exact problem is happening in crypto today, but on a much larger scale and in a much more terrifying way. ICO after ICO, people with highly technical backgrounds are making huge claims, many of which are certainly impossible.

It is too difficult for a layman to figure out which ones, if any, are legitimate. It requires months of studying to have any idea. Even some of the brightest folks in Crypto (like Vitalik Buterin) seem to avoid talking about other groups (like Cardano), I'm guessing because it's just so damn hard to figure anything out with any certainty. And I think this is intentional on the part of the newer ICOs, because they are largely scamming everyone.

What is Vitalik going to say - "I don't understand Cardano"? That wouldn't go over well.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#74

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

phs318u wrote: post #66
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. That thinking might paper over a middling start-up with a mix of sincerity and hype but just a poor product or unsuccessful funding rounds. Theranos, and other unicorn-scale hype, is a whole different thing. It doesn’t get this bad unless there is a seriously malevolent drive for the money, essentially saying that you deserve money just for an idea, just for being a made-up executive, regardless of all…

> It’s a technology narcissism problem. BINGO! What a great term. I've never heard it called that before (which now seems hard to believe), but have definitely seen it SO many times before (specifically in massive corporate IT programs - the domain I work in as an enterprise architect). Did you coin this phrase? I'm so using this! Thank you.

I doubt I am the first to call it that, but I haven’t seen it elsewhere that I am presently aware of. Having a taxonomy of this bad behavior, with useful names, does seem important, to make identifying it and discussing it more widespread.

I imagine young founders not wishing to be like Holmes could benefit from a rubric of sorts that helps classify this behavior. And for bad-faith founders who do want to behave like Holmes just without getting caught, talking more systematically about it would make it harder for them, limit their options.

What would be really cool is a modern version of Moral Mazes directed at startups.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#75

Post by flukus »

cepth wrote: post #30
mikekchar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about Theranos, but I remember writing a proof in university. The TA in the class was a PhD student doing research in group theory. My proof relied on doing some manipulation of exponents and there was a point where I was doing "1 + (-1) = 0". The TA just could not understand that bit. He was absolutely sure that in some circumstances this wouldn't hold. No amount of discussion about how integers fo…

Fair enough! The book is worth the read. I think I may be being a bit unfair to the scientists. Basically, Theranos was a hot enough startup that Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani would fire, demote, or marginalize anyone who made a fuss. Lifelong academics may have never had to deal with that kind of bullying/pressure before. On the other hand, they had some pretty incredible scientific talent on staff. You would t…

> On the other hand, they had some pretty incredible scientific talent on staff. You would think that people who are highly cited and have a reputation to protect would have spoke up sooner. Instead, the first two people to make any kind of sustained fuss were two fresh out of college hires.

Knowing how to work within the system is probably how they were afforded the chance to build this reputation int the first place. It's possible they were trying to do the same here but didn't realize the fundamental differences between the academic system and the commercial one.

Fresh college grads haven't yet learned how to "not make waves", which is a blessing and a curse.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#76

Post by duxup »

ubernostrum wrote: post #52
duxup wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning" Were there? I'm not doubting your claim, just wondering if anyone really spoke up. Reading about the challenges they would have had to overcome to back up their claims, there were some serious fundamental problems, and those were challenges the industry had been wrangling with when it came to tha…

The Wall Street Journal was running investigative pieces seriously questioning Theranos' capabilities in 2015. Concerns and questions had been bubbling for a while before that. Theranos' response included an all-company meeting where they chanted "Fuck you, Carreyrou"[1] (John Carreyrou, the WSJ reporter who wrote the critical articles), and developeing a video game for employees that involved shooting him[2]. Notice…

It's always funny when they blame the media.

Theranos in particular as if they had what they claimed, the media could poop on them forever and once they put out the product it would have changed the medical industry regardless of the media... but nope.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#77

Post by themaninthedark »

zeth___ wrote: post #59
hawkice wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between truth and falsehood matters quite a lot to the people buying and selling securities. Whether you think it matters or not, it definitely determines price, and does so independently of a bubble.

The second you're dealing with someone more complicated than an electron true and false are irrelevant. What matters is how true and false something is. Theranos was more false than true, but then again so it Tesla. How Musk will be treated after Telsa implodes will tell us a lot about how sexist our culture is. I'd personally be going for the pitchforks but I don't see many others doing the same.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

I have not followed Theranos closely but from what I have read they had no product at all. This would make Theranos completely false.

Musk may be over promising as to what his company can deliver with regards to number of units but he has a working product. This is something that has happened time and time again in all industries, if he fails than he is just another run of the mill failure.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#78

Post by tptacek »

cepth wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but doesn't the whole Tyler Schultz timeline feed right into Carreyrou's first article? Schultz was one of Carreyrou's star sources; the back quarter of the book basically documents Theranos' retaliation against Schultz.

I think we may be talking past each other here. I just wanted to say in the previous comment that Theranos was already on the radar of the FDA and other regulators prior to the publication of that first article. Early complaints of Phoenix-area doctors about bizarre Theranos test results had already reached regulators by the time Carreyrou went to press. If what you meant was simply that the FDA launched enforcement…

I doubt we disagree strongly. Also, all I know about this story I know from Carreyrou's book; you might know a lot more than me. Unsurprisingly given my source, I have the impression that Theranos might have survived the FDA stuff, had the WSJ debacle not occurred.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#79

Post by bangonkeyboard »

Rapzid wrote: post #71
kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

Reminds me of the doomed OnLive. Anyone who knew anything about the internet and latency was speaking out about the impossibility of it ever being a suitable experience from a latency perspective. Concerns were just treated as alternative facts at the time.

What was impossible about OnLive? Using the app was an impressively responsive remote desktop experience, and cloud gaming is very much a viable reality as shown by PlayStation Now and GeForce NOW.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#80

Post by lhorie »

kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

> come up with a framework to penalize misleading journalism, while at the same time, preserving the independence of media

Why this obsession with penalizing people? Journalists might not know better. At some point one needs to take some responsibility in determining whether what they are consuming are actually reputable data sources or just cheap/free entertainment and hearsay, and one needs to realize that news outlets have inherent biases towards telling stories that are extraordinary or otherwise appealing.

Ultimately, shouldn't everyone be applying critical thinking and the scientific method to come to their own conclusions about the world?

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