We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#81

Post by buvanshak » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #64

It works both ways though, a lot of people said Tesla was a fraud and they couldn't build a "real" electric car with a range of 300 miles. And to the credit of the critics they weren't wrong, there was some serious integration of battery technology that had never been done before that made it possible for the Model S to exist. Not that I'm defending Theranos, they should have come out and said "We're running into iss…

> there was some serious integration of battery technology that had never been done before that made it possible for the Model S to exist.

Where can I read about this?

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#82

Post by spurcell93 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

monkeypizza wrote: post #67

cowpig wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He gets credit for not doing something extremely unethical that would have been quite risky, probably stupidly so (because it would bring him into the controversy)?

If you don't give him credit for that, what would you give him credit for? If he stopped Carreyrou, you'd obviously blame him. Therefore in order for your judgement to be meaningful, you have to admit that him allowing Carreyrou to go ahead and topple the house of cards was a good action. Otherwise no matter what he does you judge him negatively - and in that case, your decision is predetermined and not of informatio…

.... Uh. Yeah. That's why the poster did give him credit.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#83

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

cowpig wrote: post #58

sohkamyung wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But some credit is due to Rupert Murdoch: despite pressure from Elizabeth Holmes (and his investment in it), he decided to allow the reporter, John Carreyrou, to publish his critical pieces on Theranos in the WSJ [1]: Several people who have worked at Murdoch papers have told me that he isn’t above interceding in editorial matters, but in this case, despite his personal interest, he didn’t. A source who has known Mur…

He gets credit for not doing something extremely unethical that would have been quite risky, probably stupidly so (because it would bring him into the controversy)?

I don't know if he gets credit for it (I'm disinclined to give him credit for anything, ever), but since a reporter in his employ came pretty close to singlehandedly ruining that investment, he makes a really bad example of how Theranos investors subverted the media.

As Carreyrou reports, Theranos definitely tried to pull strings with Murdoch, and apparently got nowhere with it. The WSJ timed the story to hit right before Holmes was set to appear at a major WSJ business conference.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#84

Post by mplewis » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

Here's a story about media manipulation from a reporter who Theranos tried to sell on the story: https://khn.org/news/reporters-notebook-the-tale-of-theranos...

I don't want to go full Elon "the media is incentivized to penalize me in particular" Musk, but the ethical thing this reporter did was to was cancel the Theranos feature. A less scrupulous reporter might have been happy to run with it.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#85

Post by xevb3k » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #78

cepth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we may be talking past each other here. I just wanted to say in the previous comment that Theranos was already on the radar of the FDA and other regulators prior to the publication of that first article. Early complaints of Phoenix-area doctors about bizarre Theranos test results had already reached regulators by the time Carreyrou went to press. If what you meant was simply that the FDA launched enforcement…

I doubt we disagree strongly. Also, all I know about this story I know from Carreyrou's book; you might know a lot more than me. Unsurprisingly given my source, I have the impression that Theranos might have survived the FDA stuff, had the WSJ debacle not occurred.

I think that’s possible.

But if it wasn’t consumer testing, then I don’t think it would have been news, and the fallout wouldn’t have been as big.

So, we possibly agree. The fact that they started doing consumer testing with a device that didn’t work made this news.

However, similar kinds of lies/misinformation gets told to investors in biotech startups all the time. That they actually did consumer testing is what made this news.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#86

Post by mplewis » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

bangonkeyboard wrote: post #79

Rapzid wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the doomed OnLive. Anyone who knew anything about the internet and latency was speaking out about the impossibility of it ever being a suitable experience from a latency perspective. Concerns were just treated as alternative facts at the time.

What was impossible about OnLive? Using the app was an impressively responsive remote desktop experience, and cloud gaming is very much a viable reality as shown by PlayStation Now and GeForce NOW.

I agree. From what I read about OnLive's failure, they had major problems with founder Steve Perlman, which spiraled into lack of direction, a pivot, and a crash. The tech worked pretty well when I tried it.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#87

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

> how important it is that we come up with a framework to penalize misleading journalism

That would require the existence of a group of people empowered decide what is the truth and what is not. Such groups have a really, really bad history. No thanks.

(The history of it is so bad that protection from such groups is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.)

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#88

Post by lomnakkus » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #80

kumarvvr wrote: post #26

The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…

> come up with a framework to penalize misleading journalism, while at the same time, preserving the independence of media Why this obsession with penalizing people? Journalists might not know better. At some point one needs to take some responsibility in determining whether what they are consuming are actually reputable data sources or just cheap/free entertainment and hearsay, and one needs to realize that news out…

> Journalists might not know better.

I don't understand why this would excuse anything. Journalism is almost literally their about to (get to) know better about things and explaining to the rest of us.

At least, that's what it should be -- these days it seems to be mostly about generating clickbait. (Sorry if that's cynical -- I've just read Trust Me, I'm Lying.)

> Ultimately, shouldn't everyone be applying critical thinking and the scientific method to come to their own conclusions about the world?

Of course, but there's limited time to investigate everything in ultimate skeptical detail, and so we rely on others we trust.

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#89

Post by xevb3k » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:40 AM UTC

cepth wrote: post #35

xevb3k wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cepth’s comment looks more in-depth. But I dug out the following quote, I think this was the first kind of consumer facing testing: “AFTER ALL THE DELAYS, the partnership seemed to finally be getting off the ground in the early months of 2012: as a beta run before a full launch, the companies had agreed that Theranos would take over the blood testing at an employee health clinic Safeway had opened on its corporate ca…

From the Carreyrou piece on Tyler Schultz ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook-th... ), it seems like Schultz was already complaining to Holmes about the ridiculous validation data they were submitting in April 2014, specifically sending in data from tests not performed on the machines used for consumer testing, and instead performing the proficiency testing on Siemens machines. I think this al…

I mean lying to investors is certainly illegal. But usually the investors can’t do anything about it, or perhaps more accurately don’t want to after the fact.

It’s not like suing the company gives them a desirable outcome. In fact it probably makes them look slightly more risky to companies looking for investment. Usually they just write off the investment and move on. Just like Rupert Murdoch did (sold it back to Theranos for 1USD).

Either that or they look for someone else to pump more money in or cash them out. I feel like that was the subtext of a lot of the conversations with board members/investors in the book. There was nothing they could do, except make the play look as good as possible and hope more money gets poured in and it either works eventually, or they get to cash out... so.. why acknowledge any of the issues?

Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud

#90

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:40 AM UTC

rotskoff wrote: post #6

While Theranos relied heavily on excessive optimism about technology's potential to solve a major problem, it also relied heavily on outright fraud. It's true that they had assembled a board of non-experts that were duped by unrealistic promises, but when the investors were lied to (as is being alleged in court) it seems difficult to say this is a symptom of some sort of cultural problem among investors.

"but when the investors were lied to (as is being alleged in court) it seems difficult to say this is a symptom of some sort of cultural problem among investors."

i think it's much, much worse that customers, who relied on test results for important medical decisions were lied to.

Financial fraud is one thing, but potentially killing people for greed and profit should really land the folks, which are resonsible for such scandalous behavior in the slammer for an extended stay.