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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#971

Post by exdsq »

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.

Her lawyers pressure resulted in Ian Gibbons suicide [0], they provided false medical results that could have missed crucial health results, the provided false medical results that could have caused high levels of stress and worry, etc...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#972

Post by ted_dunning »

merpnderp wrote: post #740
snek_case wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just about biotech startups. I think the obvious distinction here is that her behavior put lives at risk fairly directly. Theranos was administering blood tests to a large number of people in a beta program. These tests were incomplete and inaccurate. Said tests were used to monitor the status/recurrence of cancers and other conditions like diabetes. If you similarly put people's lives or safety in…

They weren't also testing these people with approved methods? Who would sign up for that and how is that legal or ethical? Even if she hadn't been lying these people were gambling their lives against the success of her company.

> weren't also testing these people with approved methods?

Often not and which method used wasn't disclosed so test results couldn't be sanitized.

> Who would sign up for that?

Somebody who was lied to.

> and how is that legal or ethical?

It is neither legal or ethical.

> Even if she hadn't been lying these people were gambling their lives

You are exactly correct. People were gambling their lives unwittingly.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#973

Post by cwarzel »

sharkweek wrote: post #25

This will sound weird but I am a collector of swag from large companies that have collapsed due to anything from mismanagement to outright fraud. While we're a rare breed there are others like me out there. Still, even with this oddly specific marketplace being small, let me tell you, the Theranos swag market is hot right now (check eBay if you're curious). Wish I had gone big on this one earlier, because I have a fe…

I've actually wanted to write about people who do this kind of collection! If you're interested in talking more about it, lemme know! charliewarzel@gmail.com

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#974

Post by ctchocula »

socrates1998 wrote: post #896

I am glad she was found guilty, but there are a few concerns. First, she was only convicted of lying to her investors, not the actual patients, which is laughable. Second, she is supposed to get up to 20 years for EACH of the counts (they will be served concurrently so she won't get 80 years). And I am curious as to how much time she will actually serve. Third, what kind of sociopath has a baby in the middle of a tri…

Matt Levine has a good article [1] about Theranos that goes into the irony of why she got caught on defrauding investors and not the pafients. His hypothesis is that in court of law, it's easier to make the case for damages when it's easily quantifiable (e.g. $10B in damages) rather than 1000 possibly wrong blood tests.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-04/slayin...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#975

Post by ctchocula »

thyrox wrote: post #228

Sorry this is for my own curiosity because I know nothing about US legal system, but I was watching this documentary recently about Bikram Choudhury, a yoga guru who was being prosecuted for several sex crimes and also had an arrest warrant issued against him. But in the documentary he successfully managed flee to Thailand then Mexico. They even managed to track him but he just said fuck off and that was that. Did no…

Many countries have extradition treaties with the US. It's likely that due to how much more high-profile Theranos case has been, that the US would have expended more resources tracking her down compared to the yoga guru. Plus she would have had to spend the rest of her life on the run and find a country (e.g. Russia? Cuba? Venezuela?) to grant her asylum. No normal person would want to try either of the above, much less someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#976

Post by denton-scratch »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #811
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?

> 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. She absolutely was not. It was completely obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that what she was doing was fraudulent.

I have no knowledge of the subject.

I do, however, have a strong allergic reaction to motivational speeches from wide-eyed people with enormous grins. Well, from anyone; but the wide eyes and the permanent grin (and the embarrassing grooving-along to MC Hammer) would have driven me away from that firm in an instant.

I'm amazed that anyone fell for her.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#977

Post by luckystarr »

anshumankmr wrote: post #699
luckystarr wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto ransomnists perhaps?

Crypto Ransomnists? What are those? Somebody who install malware and ask for crypto as ransom. Is that it?

Yeah. Malware is installed and all your data is encrypted. The ransomnists then demand Bitcoins to decrypt it again. The more revenue you have as a company, the higher the ransom.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#978

Post by ubermonkey »

rcoveson wrote: post #713
ubermonkey wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole thing at work here that basically goes to credibility and obvious intention. I don't know anybody who hears Musk talk and thinks "that's a true statement." He's a circus barker. We might call him a bullshitter -- he's making a big noise, but nobody really thinks he means most of what he says. Musk has spent years building this persona, and so people generally treat him with the level of credibility he…

I don't think this would hold up in court, and I hope it wouldn't persuade a jury. One of the things that jumps out at me is that those two different perceptions, "circus barker" versus "deadly fucking serious", are highly subjective. Gender-biased, even. On of the things that women in STEM often complain about is our willingness to smile at a man being stern while shaking our heads at a woman acting that way. That's…

Well, normal human discourse isn't bound by the very specific rules of a courtroom.

I figured someone would suggest there's a gender issue at play in my distinction, and I think that's inevitable and unfortunate because I'd be making the same point if they were both men or both women.

Another factor I somehow managed to omit is that Musk's predictions are far enough off to be seen as aspirational, not statements of actual forecast. He said we'd have Tesla Johnnycabs by X date, but then no real movement on them happened, and self-driving proved harder than expected, and so far nothing has come of it. That's barker behavior. That's making noise to get headlines. I think it's still stupid and unserious and fundamentally not honest, but it's not fraud.

Holmes outright lied about what Theranos could do, and behaved (we now know) in ways that showed she KNEW she was lying and that the repercussions would be significant if Theranos was exposed, all while enriching herself from it. That's fraud.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#979

Post by avgcorrection »

ineedasername wrote: post #860
darksaints wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who think well of him. I don't happen to be one of them, but not everyone views his actions through the same lens. Also his de-escalation of tensions with the Soviet Union overshadows a lot of the other stuff for many people. He was a horrifically adept player of the realpolitik game, and for some people the awful acts that came with that game are just the necessary costs…

You are very adverse to the “war criminal” label. I guess that’s too disrespectful for your tastes. (We must, above all else, respect the “players” of the “politicking”.)

Reading comments by students of polsci (amateur or pro) either makes me fall asleep—oh the regergutation of supposed “ideals” and bromides and empty platitudes—or makes me shake my head in disgust. They must have ascended to a Platonic Plane where they are unperturbed by the implications of what they say.

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