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U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

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Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#131

Post by givinguflac »

legulere wrote: post #117
ryporter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that is how innovation occurs. There are many examples of "ridiculous" ideas that ended being wildly successful. Where would Elon Musk be if he listened to all of the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work? Obviously, the putative innovators massively failed in this case, but I don't think that the outcome proves that their original idea was fatally flawed, or at least that it wasn't worth at…

> the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work which ideas? Is there really that much innovative stuff by elon musk? My impression is, that it was always more about economic feasibility than technical feasibility. Competitors to Tesla and SpaceX existed before those were founded but they lacked the investment.

I would say at the very least, the construction of the Model S and the supercharger network are hugely innovative.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#132

Post by [deleted] »

jsemrau wrote: post #68
nell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a thin line in one plane but 1AU in a different plane.

If you pull a string that has the length of 1au, would it take 8 minutes for the other side to react to the tug, or would it move as soon as you pull the string?

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#133

Post by corecoder »

ryporter wrote: post #87
kumarski wrote: post #62

I've talked to over 100 hematologists. This business, didn't pass a basic litmus test of objective criticism from people who work in the space. There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss. I think if there's an elephant in the room though, it probably should be assassinated with a huge body of transparent evidence.

To be fair, that is how innovation occurs. There are many examples of "ridiculous" ideas that ended being wildly successful. Where would Elon Musk be if he listened to all of the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work? Obviously, the putative innovators massively failed in this case, but I don't think that the outcome proves that their original idea was fatally flawed, or at least that it wasn't worth at…

Innovation is not the point; there's nothing wrong in building early stage prototypes, even incomplete or mostly non working ones. But you should not sell them as production ready, nor employ them in providing a service sold as production ready. For instance, Elon Musk hasn't yet opened a travel agency selling hyperloop tickets.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#134

Post by CPLX »

logicallee wrote: post #85
jacalata wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos was not viable because it was a scam and people in the industry thought exactly that. Unless you believe taxi drivers are all arguing that Uber doesn't actually provide rides, I don't think your argument makes sense.

I'm arguing with the post that I replied to. This person wrote: >There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss which is a completely unfair generalization and hurts all founders, of all companies. You raise irrelevant points. But to answer you, yes, there was a time in the past when taxi drivers would have argued that Uber is a scam, yes. I d…

It should probably be noted that nearly all founder bravado is misplaced, just from a mathematical standpoint, as nearly all startup founders are helming failing businesses.

Whether that is a feature or a bug I suppose is a different question.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#135

Post by krisdol »

foota wrote: post #36
joeyrideout wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First bullet point in the list of sanctions in the Theranos press release you linked: "Revocation of the laboratory’s CLIA certificate which, as dictated by the regulations, includes a prohibition on owners and operators of the lab from owning, operating or directing a lab for at least two years from the date of revocation " (emphasis mine)

Wouldn't Theranos be the owner and operator of the lab?

Can't they work around this by renting the lab?

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#136

Post by rdlecler1 »

ryporter wrote: post #87
kumarski wrote: post #62

I've talked to over 100 hematologists. This business, didn't pass a basic litmus test of objective criticism from people who work in the space. There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss. I think if there's an elephant in the room though, it probably should be assassinated with a huge body of transparent evidence.

To be fair, that is how innovation occurs. There are many examples of "ridiculous" ideas that ended being wildly successful. Where would Elon Musk be if he listened to all of the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work? Obviously, the putative innovators massively failed in this case, but I don't think that the outcome proves that their original idea was fatally flawed, or at least that it wasn't worth at…

The original idea was flawed. The reason so much blood needs to be drawn is because small samples too heterogeneous. Unless you change the properties of blood no test will fix that. Many many people knew this which shows that investors failed to perform some fairly basic due diligence and instead invested in gut and founder charisma. That may be okay when you're betting on a social network, but charisma can't overcome intrinsic empirical limitation.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#137

Post by danellis »

pfortuny wrote: post #130
ryporter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law of physics makes what Theranos attempted to achieve impossible? They were still drawing blood from the patient. Thus, it seems theoretically possible for technology to overcome the challenges the approach presents.

Concentration is a global property which cannot be assessed locally in a fluid.

So all blood tests are useless?

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#138

Post by nathancahill »

ekianjo wrote: post #41
yyyuuu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite strange, how easy it is to build a valuation

Most of the time you just need to show up at TED and pretend your stuff is going to change the world, despite all you have for proof is close to nothing.

"We've already completed step 1. We're half way there." applause

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#139

Post by dingo_bat »

danellis wrote: post #137
pfortuny wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concentration is a global property which cannot be assessed locally in a fluid.

So all blood tests are useless?

Blood tests use a relatively large amount of blood to counter the problem. Also many blood tests are repeated multiple times before the doctor produces the final diagnosis. So multiple units of blood from a vein distributed over days vs a pinprick's worth of blood from a finger.

Re: U.S. Bans Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes from Operating Labs for Two Years

#140

Post by DougBTX »

_pmf_ wrote: post #119
kumarski wrote: post #62

I've talked to over 100 hematologists. This business, didn't pass a basic litmus test of objective criticism from people who work in the space. There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss. I think if there's an elephant in the room though, it probably should be assassinated with a huge body of transparent evidence.

Can someone explain me how Theranos' claim is anything else than me claiming that I can do a representative study with 5 participants and have the same statistical significance as others doing a study with 10000 participants? Isn't this just elementary statistics and completely independent from the domain?

If it is known beforehand that all the participants will answer in the same way, testing 5 will produce as much information as testing 10000, so the question is whether any beforehand assertion like that applies.

One reason that assertion might not hold is if the 5 being tested come from a special interest group, knowing if that could be the case or not depends on domain knowledge.

http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume17Number1/compos...

So, it is known that small samples of blood taken from capillaries will have a different composition than large samples taken from veins. Is it possible to write a test that compensates for the known differences? Or is it just known that they are so different that one can't be inferred from the other? Hard to tell, needs cutting edge domain knowledge.

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