Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors • Hacker News Board

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#151

Post by toss1 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

short_sells_poo wrote: post #146

toss1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very succinct statement of the issue. Not only is Western society too tolerant of sociopathy, corporate structures tend to actively filter to top ranks those with such behaviors (just spend 5min reading Glassdoor or any employment-related NH topic...).

I have a pet theory on this that is entirely based on my own biased views: societies which are communal, whether around a family, village, tribe, etc..., tend to keep sociopathic tendencies in check. Either the sociopathic individual is exiled from the group, or at least identified and prevented from harming the collective. If the larger structure is still made up of smaller (at most 100s of individuals) communities,…

Indeed! The ability to make a mess then move on to a new crowd to abuse/scam/etc. without your reputation fully following you, is hugely enabling for sociopaths.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#152

Post by thehappypm » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #34

thehappypm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda disagree. Sure, she was not honest to investors. But who cares? these investors are billionaires trying to make a quick buck. The faulty equipment in actual pharmacies is problematic, but I can actually see how prototypes out in the wild is a good thing.

>Sure, she was not honest to investors. ... or the businesses that purchased the machines, and every average person who got tested with those machines and put their faith in the results, all because she was dishonest. This is the healthcare industry we're speaking of - it's not just investors at stake here, it's everyone's health that she put at stake for the sake of getting herself rich. Edit: Regarding prototypes i…

I agree that the prototypes in the wild was done improperly. If it's a prototype used for data gathering with a big "these are prototypes!" waiver, then that's one thing. I'm not sure how they were positioned in the stores they were placed in, if they were marketed as a 100% accuracy miracle box or an up-and-coming technology that still has to have kinks worked out. In either case I'm struggling that this is jail time criminal; I think at best it's a civil issue.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#153

Post by MrGando » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #133

ta1234567890 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber Explanation, since this is being downvoted. Uber might not have lied about their business, but it surely looks like investors never cared about the businesses viability and rather only cared about being able to turn a profit on their investment (which was the point being made by the gp). To this day, it is still not clear if Uber’s business model is viable. Also not to mention the original CEO/founder’s reputati…

"Uber might not have lied about their business" Yea that is what we discussing about Theranos. Theranos was an outright fraud. You cannot say the same about Uber whether they inflated or lied about their profits etc. Uber provides a real service and honestly a good one for people. Theranos on the other hand, played with people's lives by lying about their entire business model and product which never worked. Big diff…

I think you're somewhat making an argument that the "means" are justified if the end is noble. I think the whole discussion revolts around the several issues with that "system" or "philosophy" here in the Valley.

I personally don't think it's the right way to do things. Big fraud, small lies (fraud), it's all pretty bad.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#154

Post by cblconfederate » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #141

photochemsyn wrote: post #29

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…

As someone who knows very little about biology, I watched the HBO documentary about Theranos and am kind of still confused by some of the conflicting claims I hear. In the documentary, they focused a lot on the engineering challenges of the machine they were making. The blood samples would spill, which would gum up the mechanical workings of the machine and make a huge mess and contaminate all the other samples. The…

Were they the first ones to do it?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#155

Post by thehappypm » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

dustintrex wrote: post #37

thehappypm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda disagree. Sure, she was not honest to investors. But who cares? these investors are billionaires trying to make a quick buck. The faulty equipment in actual pharmacies is problematic, but I can actually see how prototypes out in the wild is a good thing.

Not being honest to investors is one thing. Knowingly peddling faulty lab results to consumers making important medical decisions based on the results and unaware that they were pawns in this game is quite different. This is what makes the Theranos case qualitatively different from (say) WeWork, and why she's facing criminal charges. You buy office space from WeWork, you get exactly what you pay for, even if there we…

What I'm struggling with is how this is criminal.

Like, there are rapid COVID tests out there. They're marketed as accurate. Yet everyone knows they're not foolproof. If I got a positive rapid test, the first thing I'd do is go get a PCR test.

With these Theranos lab tests, it's honestly (to me) a similar thing. If I'm a startup trying to make a cheap HIV test, and I know it's not perfect, it's wrong sometimes, does that make me a criminal for wanting to get real-world users to use my product? Isn't it more of a regulatory oversight if people are making medical decisions based on new and imperfect tech?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#156

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

ta1234567890 wrote: post #87

avalys wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide any examples of a high-profile company, ultimately shown to be dishonest, where the early investors were able to “cash out” before this dishonesty became known?

Uber Explanation, since this is being downvoted. Uber might not have lied about their business, but it surely looks like investors never cared about the businesses viability and rather only cared about being able to turn a profit on their investment (which was the point being made by the gp). To this day, it is still not clear if Uber’s business model is viable. Also not to mention the original CEO/founder’s reputati…

> which the investors also didn’t care about until it became too big of a scandal

More like investors didn't care until they needed liquidity.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#157

Post by ipsum2 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #92

tushar-r wrote: post #62

I recommend the "Bad Blood: The Final Chapter" podcast by John Carreyrou. He's the journalist who broke the story and the podcast goes into some detail about the history and also talks about what is going on now.

I recommend the video of her dancing to "Can't Touch This": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrT0jKOhnD4 and the video of her using her real, non-deep, voice: https://youtu.be/PjnsYz-xdOI?t=55

I despise Holmes, but using a video of her dancing as an argument against her seems like an ad homeniem.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#158

Post by Hermitian909 » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #48

MattGaiser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the SV “fake it ‘till you make it” culture. Right now Tesla is delivering “full self driving” cars that require a human driver at all times. Experts have said that it’s not possible using cameras alone, without LiDAR. Oversell and underdeliver. Fraud works great until it doesn’t.

I mean, we can go the other way by looking at SpaceX. I spent years reading detailed reports from experts that everything SpaceX was doing was impossible.

-A rocket made of steel

-Landing a rocket anywhere

-Landing a bigger rocket anywhere

-Landing a rocket on solid ground

-Landing a big rocket on the ground

and a lot of smaller things in between.

I read many plausible looking reports on the non-feasability of these things often came with the backing of professors at respected universities and they were all wrong.

Sometimes it goes the other way.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#159

Post by supperburg » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #29

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…

Never ever forget that anyone who said Holmes was a fraud was screamed down by accusations of sexism and toxic masculinity.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#160

Post by SkyMarshal » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #56

krageon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how they didn't do due diligence "due diligence" processes are in practice a lot less stringent or rigorous than an outsider would expect them to be given the amount of money involved. Companies get bought based on glorified sales pitches and nobody looks too hard at what they're buying is the unfortunate truth of the matter. Investors are no better.

I think it probably depends. When we sold our company they spent months digging into numbers. And they kept asking for new types of metrics that we had to figure out ways to derive from data that wasn't necessarily designed to measure those metrics.

You’re talking about selling your company, rather than raising money for a startup.

At the stage where you’re selling a company, you’re expected to have sales, metrics, and various track records that can be verified, hence the intensive due diligence. And usually the acquiring company has in-house expertise on the domain, and is capable of doing the due diligence.

Early stage startups have none of that, just an idea, things the team have done before as proof they can execute, and sometimes some social proof like TED talks or high-profile board members.

The challenge of doing due diligence then is that most general VCs that invest across a broad range of domains lack the in-house expertise to fully vet all of them. They can hire SME advisors, or ask around in their network, and should. But it’s possible for things to slip through the cracks sometimes.