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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

#201

Post by craftyguy »

specialist wrote: post #193
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 wh…

> In my case, all postal balloting, which is worse than the touchscreens.

Got any more info on this? I'm in a state where all voting is done through postal ballots.

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

#202

Post by naravara »

jm__87 wrote: post #192
donbright wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm glad any random billionaire with cash to throw around gets to make these decisions for us.

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

#203

Post by Bartweiss »

cepth wrote: post #22
ezzaf wrote: post #18

This snippet is amazing: "Theranos kept up the illusion that they were running a lot of the tests from finger-stick blood draws by hacking the Siemens machines to work with small samples" No wonder they had so many inaccurate test results.

The full process as described in the book is even more shocking. Theranos would dilute the finger stick draws, and then run them on the Siemens machines 5 times. In theory, you could then calculate the concentration, and adjust for the dilution. In reality, the diluted samples would have concentrations of the relevant cells and elements that were too low to pick up. To “fix” this, they would do those 5 runs, then cal…

Also alarming - the Siemens machines already dilute samples, and the amount of dilution is set (in part) by making sure every sample test will have a usable concentration. So Theranos didn't just dilute where others didn't, they took a system that already used up all of the 'safe' margin for dilution and knowingly added more!

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

#204

Post by Bartweiss »

psergeant wrote: post #146
pseingatl wrote: post #19

But we can be very surprised at the disparity in treatment between Theranos execs, who got off scott free, and Pharma Bro, who made all his investors whole and still got prison.

Pharma Bro needs to go to prison to stop the next arrogant idiot who thinks he can dig himself out of a hole from attempting to do so. That he actually managed to is great — for his investors — but it’s not a course of action society wants to promote.

It was pretty much the stock equivalent of check kiting. If you've got enough money coming in, you can often fill accounts before the checks clear and steal nothing; the reason it's illegal is that you're hiding risks by claiming to have the money in hand.

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

#205

Post by msla »

naravara wrote: post #202
jm__87 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm glad any random billionaire with cash to throw around gets to make these decisions for us.

The only reason he was able to do what he did was because Gawker broke the law.

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

#206

Post by camelCaseOfBeer »

The hell am I doing working for money when I could just be lying to dumb rich people? Hey Richie Rich, I just invented a machine that cures bowell irregularity by whispering pleasant self-affirmations in your ear. "Relax, you are your body's destiny, release your burdens and fly free." I'll take my billion in cash, please.

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

#207

Post by supreme_sublime »

naravara wrote: post #202
jm__87 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm glad any random billionaire with cash to throw around gets to make these decisions for us.

Strange that you view it this way. I'm not extremely familiar with the case, but how I remember it is Gawker published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and refused to take it down. While at the same time lampooning "society" about "the fappening". Hulk Hogan sued Gawker, which brings it to a court. Peter Thiel had a personal grudge against Gawker and used that case to take them down. Either way, it was still up to a court and all Thiel was doing was helping to fund Hogan's legal case. I'd hope that our courts have enough integrity to where if the evidence is against someone, no amount of money will change that verdict. Perhaps a bit idealistic, but I see no evidence that Thiel's money caused an inappropriate ruling in that case.

I'd characterize it as, "journalists" using their platform to go after specific people they don't like. Thiel helping one of their victims who couldn't afford to mount a case without running the risk of ruining themselves if they lost. Seems to me like a really noble thing to do.

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

#208

Post by ryandrake »

wetpaws wrote: post #110
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…

Everyone who would dare to criticize Holmes would go against modern empowerment narrative and claimed as misogynist, so I'm not surprised.

You’re getting the usual downvotes for this, but there’s probably some truth here. Remember, the Theranos story started up right around when the whole “we need more women in tech” stuff started gaining steam. All the stories were coming out about how tech was run by men and full of bros. Lo and behold, here comes this young, seemimgly technical woman who dropped out of school and dressed/acted like the next Steve Jobs. It fit perfectly into the existing story! Like the X-Files poster, everyone Wanted To Believe! The Theranos story hit the tech press right in that blind spot, and people were willing to overlook their skepticism in order to believe that they were witnessing a real female Steve Jobs tech celebrity.

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

#209

Post by paidleaf »

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…

> The Wall Street Journal is the only reason the company was outed.

No. The company was outed by people long before the wsj. The wsjalong with the rest of the media was the one that built theranos up because they wanted to push the feminism agenda.

The wsj stepped in and took the credit after the exposure/pressure on social media was going to break the story wide open.

It's similar to the nytimes taking credit and getting the pulitzer prize for breaking the weinstein story which they kept quiet for more than a decade. But once social media was exposing the story, the nytimes decided to release the story they kept quiet for so long.

It's like an arsonist who helped set a house on fire dousing the house with a glass of water after the firefighters put out the fire and pretending that they saved the house.

And lets not forget that if you criticized theranos or holmes, most of the media/journalists ( including those working for the wsj ) would attack you for being a sexist or a bigot.

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

#210

Post by specialist »

craftyguy wrote: post #201
specialist wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

> In my case, all postal balloting, which is worse than the touchscreens. Got any more info on this? I'm in a state where all voting is done through postal ballots.

Paper ballots are scanned upon receipt. So you might as well fax your ballot. They keep the paper for a while, sometimes used for manual recounts, under very narrow circumstances.

Because there's no second chance, admins have to adjudicate for voter intent. So they modify the votes in the database.

To protect the database, as part of the backup, the votes are tallied both at end and beginning of shift. That means a running vote count. Law is that votes can only be tabulated when the polls close. So admin's have the fiction of "summary reports" vs "tabulation".

Yes, admins peek at early results.

Another new threat to integrity is signature verification. But that's a whole topic onto itself.

Happily...

The biggest mitigation would be to switch from brittle FPTP to robust approval voting and proportional representation (as appropriate).

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