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Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

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Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#121

Post by auxbuss »

skookumchuck wrote: post #107
mchannon wrote: post #3

Thomas Edison freely admitted most of his 1,093 US patents were for inventions that would never have worked. Patenting a completely ridiculous and impossible idea is quite straightforward if you know the system and have the money and reputation. Journalists are notoriously bad at technical due diligence, but the fact is even trained scientists and engineers can be duped, particularly when access is limited. Having be…

Isn't it ironic that people who cheat on exams expend so much effort at it? Wouldn't it be easier to just learn the material?

Fear of failure (of negative evaluation) is a strong psychological force for those seeking social approval. One way is to avoid evaluation entirely or until things are certain.

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#122

Post by tod222 »

southern_cross wrote: post #66
Reedx wrote: post #22

I think a big part of it is that people wanted it to be true. The idea is very compelling. Who wouldn't want it to be true/possible? And it's obvious to anyone how valuable such a thing would be. Plus... Young woman founder/CEO (& paper billionaire as a result). Dropout from Stanford. Silicon Valley. On the cover of magazines. Big names on the board. Association with Bill Clinton, etc.

She's relatively young and attractive and perhaps possesses hidden talents. Like maybe the ability to charm the pants off (so to speak) of men - especially older, rich, powerful men who were in a position to help move her ambitions along. Also men who may have been somewhat blinded to obvious warning signs of potential trouble.

Board members Henry Kissinger and William Perry unwittingly admitted they were dupes ten months prior to the first Carreyrou article in a Dec. 2014 article by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker: [1]

Kissinger, who is ninety-one, told me that Holmes “has a sort of ethereal quality—that is to say, she looks like nineteen. And you say to yourself, ‘How is she ever going to run this?’ ” She does so, he said, “by intellectual dominance; she knows the subject.”

Board members are clearly charmed by Holmes. She is a careful listener, and she is unnervingly serene; employees say that they can’t remember an instance when she raised her voice. “She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison,” Perry, who knew Jobs, said. “She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; she’s one with a big heart.”

1: https://archive.fo/yhpXZ

Re: Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed?

#123

Post by rafiki6 »

Patents aren't a peer-reviewed academic journal. They're just a way to gain exclusive rights to an idea for a period of time, whether or not that idea pans out. If I am doing competition research, it's not to determine the feasibility of the patents, but rather if I will get sued if I attempt to build my idea. My incentive is not to validate their work, but rather my liability.
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