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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#921

Post by erosenbe0 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #777
potta_coffee wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember thinking that all the hype about her was somewhat over the top.

I was going through a health tech startup incubator at the time, and it became a bit of a meme where we'd poke fun at anyone who bought into Theranos. Some went as far as putting together a slide deck to debunk the claims about running labs on such tiny volumes of blood. This was when and where I learned about the heterogeneity of blood.

It was an obvious farce. If they had real tech they could have simply done a million comparative tests on the military/VA or at free clinics and showed the relative accuracy.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#922

Post by erosenbe0 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #899
ferdowsi wrote: post #737

I'm loving reading through all of the sickening puff pieces that business/tech journalists put out about her and Theranos. It's funny to think back to 2015 and the hagiographical void still left in tech journo hearts after Steve Jobs died. https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-i... > How Elizabeth Holmes Became America's New Entrepreneurial Icon > She represents the part of entrepreneurship that…

LOL, um, you are on a silicon valley startup site? The valuations of practically every company that comes out of here until it "goes public" is almost entirely based on this hype media infrastructure, or at least are dependent on somewhere between four and eight 0s in those company's valuations. This is a parable about sociopaths in society. They are tolerable as long as they are usable fools: useful for war, useful…

Agree. And it was further shameful how the hype machine may have utilized her gender to try and portray her to young women and girls as a role model. When there are plenty of female CEO ushering in successful products like Dr. Lisa Su or whomever.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#923

Post by thehappypm »

duxup wrote: post #155

What always amazed me is they had nothing… nothing that could do the thing they claimed. To the point they used competitors machines to produce results. Pretty amazing.

This is a vast oversimplification. They had machines. The machines did (sometimes) work for some tests. They were doing R&D to improve things. Rather than be honest Holmes decided to build a house of cards of lies.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#924

Post by ineedasername »

darksaints wrote: post #838
ineedasername wrote: post #792

Ironic that her board of directors-- one of the most praised aspects of Theranos-- probably hurt her when it came to going after her with criminal charges. These were some of the most well-connected people in the country, and making them look like fools did her no favors. Once it was clear this wouldn't go away quietly, I'd bet they pushed hard to ensure criminal prosecution. (which I think she deserved anyway.) Espe…

> I doubt Kissinger or the people around him want the last of his legacy to be punctuated by Theranos. I doubt the world's most notorious unprosecuted war criminal would have his reputation tarnished by advising a fraudster.

Separate from my other response, he is probably not a villain in his own mind. So, while Theranos wouldn't even register against some of his other acts from the opinions of many, it very well might in his own mind.

I also should have been clearer in my original comment and provided another aspect of the influence people at that level have: It can often be passive. It may not take a phone call to for the influence to manifest itself: The mere involvement of prominent people like this in a scandal could be all it takes to spark significant interest by the DOJ and prosecutors to investigate, it doesn't necessarily have to be a back-channel request from the person to look into an issue. On a much smaller scale that has happened where I work before.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#925

Post by brianobush »

johnebgd wrote: post #799
caslon wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why Cryptocurrency Is A Giant Fraud >Speculators might make money on it, but the arguments for its usefulness fail completely. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is... >Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history >It’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/24/17275202/bitcoin-scam-cryptocu... >The Great Cryptocurrency Scam https://…

Articles you cited are from years ago or a contributor (not an employee) of Forbes. I met Jackson Palmer in 2017/2018 and he had a level head for looking through this mania. Even the Tether fraud hasn’t stopped the Bitcoin buying frenzy.

> Even the Tether fraud hasn’t stopped the Bitcoin buying frenzy.

OT, but why would Tether impact Bitcoin? They are totally different use cases of crypto.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#926

Post by andrei_says_ »

HWR_14 wrote: post #490
andrei_says_ wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the people working for Holmes/Theranos who were doing the legwork of systematically and knowingly defrauding patients?

It's fairly easy to set up situations where the people doing the actual work are not knowingly defrauding anyone. The salespeople are told the machine is real, the delivery people never see inside the lab, the testers inside the lab are trained by the few people really in on it (I don't think they had the proper independent training) so they don't know how bad the tests are, and the scientists think everyone knows th…

In other words, Theranos was intentionally set up as a criminal organization?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#927

Post by roelschroeven »

WalterBright wrote: post #883
bb101 wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do feel sorry for her in a way. She was riding a treadmill of expectations. Started off slowly, probably thinking "yeah, we can do this" and by the time the treadmill was moving at light speed, it was too late to get off. Even TED has removed her talk from YouTube. What responsibility do the media bear when their shallow hype turns out to be false and damaging to all parties?

Her story arc is much like Bernie Madoff's. He, too, only really hurt wealthy investors. But did anyone feel bad for him?

Only hurt wealthy investors? What about people who received incorrect testing results, like the woman who was given a false-positive HIV result and the woman who was incorrectly told that she was miscarrying?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/theranos-results... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/theranos-gave-wo...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#928

Post by yawaworht1978 »

geophile wrote: post #747
evancoop wrote: post #715

The relevant detail, in my mind, is not whether Holmes deserves punishment, or even how much. The relevant detail is how the judge ultimately sentences Holmes, and more importantly, on what basis the judge selects the upper or lower range of possible sentencing outcomes. Considering that BS, stretching of capabilities, and so on are commonplace in the startup world, the point isn't whether Holmes crossed the line (sh…

I think there is a pretty sharp line separating what Holmes tried, and what legitimate startups do. What she claimed had no basis in reality. It's Borat trying to patent a hoverboard, just like in Back to the Future, and telling the VC that he "needs to come up with the science" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXuDhejxz_c ). Except that Holmes was worse, claiming that she had the science. And she insulated herself…

I always wonder why people who buy Tesla's fsd think that is any different.

The company literally tells them the hardware is there, it's "only" missing the software.

Like, what's a robot worth without the undeveloped software.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#929

Post by zazzyzuzz »

troyvit wrote: post #877
bb101 wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do feel sorry for her in a way. She was riding a treadmill of expectations. Started off slowly, probably thinking "yeah, we can do this" and by the time the treadmill was moving at light speed, it was too late to get off. Even TED has removed her talk from YouTube. What responsibility do the media bear when their shallow hype turns out to be false and damaging to all parties?

I feel bad for her too. She messed up, and probably did it intentionally too. That's messed up, but how much physical harm did people suffer? 60 years of prison time's worth? Near as I can tell a bunch of investors lost some money. Are they on the street now, begging for dinner? Kinda doubt it. Maybe there's a more fitting punishment.

I think the harm was caused by using the investors and prestige of the company to build the consumer confidence into passing faulty testing on to patients and some patients testified to receiving pretty devastating false positives and results. Their customer service was directed to minimize their potential failure rates until one of the later lab directors voided a lot of the faulty test results after discovering how bad it actually was. While I believe she was mainly convicted of defrauding investors, it's not like her actions happened in a bubble. They operated for like 10 years like that.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#930

Post by ineedasername »

luckydata wrote: post #891
deepsun wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Draper was telling everyone that Holmes did no wrong. Last time I checked, a large poster with Elisabet Holmes was still present at the back of Hero City (Draper's accelerator, across the street from Draper University).

Tim must be the single human being holding the most incorrect opinions on the face of the planet. I've never heard him being right about anything, it's kind of amazing really.

His "University" is somewhat questionable as well. It was very much not a university when founded and only achieved legitimacy by proxy when ASU took them under its wing. And ASU seems to have dropped any reference to the ridiculous "Hero" pretentions in its marketing of the program-- I don't see any reference to it from ASU since 2018.

It also doesn't appear to have produced many notable alumni in its (nearly) decade of existence: Some of the Alumni they feature are profiles of people with defunct products. The QTUM crypto currency may be an exception as a somewhat moderately successful coin w/ market cap ~$1B, although that's not quite the same as a Unicorn valuation since it doesn't really all belong to QTUM as an organization.

It's possible I'm not being fair on the Alumni though: It does seem that fair number have gone on to modest success, and as I reflect on the above, the SV focus on multi-$billion valuations is possibly coloring my judgment. ASU-Draper doesn't necessarily have to be a Unicorn factory to be successful, so I'll temper my above judgement with that.

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