Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 257 posts

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

#191

Post by patja »

Kiro wrote: post #115
busterarm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember there were immediately after the 2014 TED talk. Heck, I watched that talk and immediately thought it was a complete fraud. Turns out that's like 7 years into this company being around and a year after they'd been full-on defrauding investors. I can't recall of hearing of Theranos before then though, but I'm not in the valley.

A lot of "I remember" in this thread but where are the links?

Google "Geoffrey Baird Theranos"

Geoff Baird plays in my regular poker game. He's probably one of the smartest people I know and has been regularly denouncing Theranos' methods for several years.

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

#192

Post by jm__87 »

donbright wrote: post #99
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…

The Wall Street Journal is the only reason the company was outed. This same journal was also one of her early boosters. We already have a framework that preserves independence of the media, the First Amendment. All of the NDAs and Boies style intimidation and legal abuse and harrasment of the whistleblowers and journalists was only stopped by the First Amendment. We already have a framework that punishes journalists…

I'm sorry, but ruining people's lives for no reason other than the entertainment of your audience like Gawker was doing is not journalism. Peter Thiel did us all a service there.

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

#193

Post by specialist »

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…

Being a whistleblower sucks.

I was an election integrity activist. We were ridiculed, harassed, and in some cases jailed.

Of course, we were (mostly) right. But there's never a nod or h/t to acknowledge the pain and sacrifice.

And don't be fooled into thinking the sniffing salts are working. There's always another con, fraud, bubble. (In my case, all postal balloting, which is worse than the touchscreens.)

I think whistleblowers should maybe just bet on the short. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#1992_pound_short

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

#194

Post by JTbane »

kumarvvr wrote: post #61
zeth___ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between fraud and development is a very small one. As Telsa motors will show in the next 9 months.

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.

Tesla is in a "better late than never" situation with production bottlenecks.

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

#195

Post by dpark »

buvanshak wrote: post #171
psergeant wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the perspective of the lay investor, what distinguishes the two cases? You can buy a Tesla car today, strip it down, and confirm it works and isn’t a giant Potemkin village?

>You can buy a Tesla car today, strip it down, and confirm it works and isn’t a giant Potemkin village? What about "Full self driving hardware"? I am pretty sure you are not going to find it there. And people have bought them thinking that it (full self driving functionality) is just one update away...

In fairness, Tesla has promised that at some point in the future. They have not claimed that they have full self driving currently. Theranos claimed to have their system working.

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

#196

Post by vkou »

twoodfin wrote: post #165
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother who is a pre-med student was able to figure out that Theranos was full of it without any special access way before the media broke the story. When Stanford Professor John Ioannidis refuses to join your board because he refuses to give your product credibility that is a HUGE red flag.

It's unfortunate that your brother and others couldn't publicly trade on this knowledge. That simultaneously would have made a ton of money and disseminated through the market the valuable information that folks were betting megabucks that Theranos was full of it, limiting their fraudulent climb into the stratosphere. This is a long way of saying that we may have created too many disincentives for large companies to…

Even if you know that a company is a pure scam, the market can remain irrational longer then you can cover your short.

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

#197

Post by lisper »

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…

There is a very powerful mythology surrounding the Independent American Inventor, a big part of which is that they overcome the mobs of naysayers shouting, "It can't be done!" by sheer force of personal will and brilliance. On this theory, the mere fact that there are people saying it can't be done tells you nothing (or, in fact, indicates that the target of the criticism is actually on to something really big!)

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

#198

Post by tptacek »

mhneu wrote: post #159
tptacek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if he gets credit for it (I'm disinclined to give him credit for anything, ever), but since a reporter in his employ came pretty close to singlehandedly ruining that investment, he makes a really bad example of how Theranos investors subverted the media. As Carreyrou reports, Theranos definitely tried to pull strings with Murdoch, and apparently got nowhere with it. The WSJ timed the story to hit right b…

Carreyrou wrote a book. This story was going to get out anyway. Murdoch is a very skilled propagandist. He knew that trying to suppress this story would have backfired on him. Especially because the machines don’t work and because Walgreens would have soon learned the truth. Nothing hurts a propagandist more than being really caught in an obvious lie. To protect his ability to slant the WSJ, Murdoch couldn’t have got…

Again, I'm not giving Murdoch any credit, but simply pointing out that Theranos clearly did not control News Corp.

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

#199

Post by dpark »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #97
keyle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still shopping for a good Aeron chair... I had one years ago and it was the best thing I've every put my tooshie on. Joke aside, a damn fine office chair.

Odd, I felt they are kinda heavy, too low to the ground, have an overcomplicated set of levers, and not super comfortable. I prefer a $50 chair from office depot...

> too low to the ground

What does that mean? The height is adjustable. At full height you still find it too low?

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

#200

Post by Bartweiss »

mxwsn wrote: post #177
sametmax wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She probably believed in her project. You can't know if you are going to succeed when you try to achieve a revolutionary feat. But you have to act like you are sure you will. Imagine Jobs in an alternate universe, trying to get out the iPhone, but after years of failures and billions wasted, the world realize the product vision was unrealistic. Basically him being the same asshole, but hitting a wall many predicted.…

While there is some unknowable risk, Theranos was in a completely different realm in terms of the mismatch between her technological aspirations and the feasibility of current technology. From the interview, Holmes appears to lack the knowledge and even the curiosity to understand the existing technology, making her company essentially a blind bet. This is enormously more irresponsible than the technological bets tha…

> lack the knowledge and even the curiosity to understand the existing technology

Honestly, this is what I understand least.

I can understand and even respect banking a company on "this isn't possible yet, but maybe we can develop new technology". That's a standard feature of legitimate biotech startups and drug research.

I can comprehend the snowballing risks, overstating a case because you think you're almost at something really impressive. I can't really understand the blatant, verifiable lies like "the DoD uses it", but it's not the first time we've seen those.

What feels new and totally baffling is to not even care what's being done and what's possible. There's no sign that Holmes or Balwani ever had any idea whether they were close to success. This wasn't just betting on horse races with borrowed money, it was betting on a dead horse because you hadn't bothered to check if it was still alive.

Post reply on HN