41–50 of 264 posts
The modern wisdom, "fake it till you make it", requires you to make it, otherwise you'll pay for lying to us.
If anyone truly deserves a very long prison sentence it is Elizabeth Holmes. I think we're about to confirm what we've always known and that has been apparent since the start of this case. That rich white people, even if they got their money by taking advantage of others are pretty immune from harsh punishment in the criminal justice system.
The problem is that none of this will work against her defense, that she was not of sane state of mind at the time.
The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…
Uber was impossible, because it was illegal.
Amazon was impossible, as you couldn't pack and ship stuff that cheaply.
Personal computers were at one point considered ludicrous.
If you haven't read the book "Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou I think you should give it a try. I think it's really worth it.
And the new podcast that Carreyrou is doing for the most updated info on the evidence and trial, “Bad Blood: The Final Chapter”.
The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…
I too thought about the counterfactual in which that if their technology actually worked, COVID testing could have been have been done at scale in the US.
The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…
The problem is that successful startups often start out claiming that which is impossible. Uber was impossible, because it was illegal. Amazon was impossible, as you couldn't pack and ship stuff that cheaply. Personal computers were at one point considered ludicrous.
Oversell and underdeliver. Fraud works great until it doesn’t.
The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…
The problem is that successful startups often start out claiming that which is impossible. Uber was impossible, because it was illegal. Amazon was impossible, as you couldn't pack and ship stuff that cheaply. Personal computers were at one point considered ludicrous.
Now, it might be harder to distinguish someone who can do it well and who'll do it poorly, but that's another issue.
The crazy thing about Theranos is that so many people with experience in microfluidics (developed mainly for DNA sequencing although there are other uses) knew that their claims were impossible, technologically speaking. Working with such small volumes to obtain quantitive estimates of blood chemistry is so implausible, as you are introducing uncontrollable variability - micro-evaporation, even tissue localization is…
The problem is that successful startups often start out claiming that which is impossible. Uber was impossible, because it was illegal. Amazon was impossible, as you couldn't pack and ship stuff that cheaply. Personal computers were at one point considered ludicrous.
All those examples (and all of yours) are from computers. Blood tests are different from computers. You cannot assume that, just because great things happened with computers, the same things can happen in all walks of life.