At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
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Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#2>In April 2014, she got a long email from another employee. The employee alleged that Theranos had cherry-picked data when comparing Edison machines to traditional lab machines to make the Edison look more accurate, according to a copy of the email.
>For one test, the device’s accuracy rate increased sharply after some information was deleted and manipulated, the employee wrote. Edison machines also allegedly failed daily quality-control checks often.
>Ms. Holmes forwarded the email to Mr. Balwani. He replied to the employee, who no longer works at Theranos, denied all the claims and questioned the employee’s understanding of statistics and lab science.
Oh man. If you read through Theranos' reviews on Glassdoor [1] this anecdote seems totally legitimate. Multiple reviews talk about the toxic culture and how management does anything to cover their behinds. Quite a few of these were written before the scandal broke so I think they're quite honest about what's going on.
[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Theranos-Reviews-E248889_P...
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#3As the article says, "blood tests sometimes provide life-or-death answers." If these allegations of fraudulent testing are true, then the executives belong in jail.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#4I'm honestly getting kind of annoyed with seeing stuff about Theranos, since everyone writing about them is beating about the bush, and only ends up describing how Theranos communicates with a startling lack of earnestness.
Example from the video, paraphrased:
Mod: "What prick tests are you able to do, using no commercially available lab equipment?"
Holmes: "[lots of waffling] We're currently only doing the Herpes test. [proceeds to not answer the question]"
Mod: [accepts the non-answer and moves on]
This kind of reporting is entirely useless, unless it's some kind of attempt to subtly out Theranos for being dishonest.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#5The key questions that needs to be addressed, is how homogenous or heterogenous are blood markers at the level they want to measure at? The machines may be reporting results accurately, but a pin-prick-sized droplet may simply not be a large enough sample size for the tests they want to run.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#6Is it just me or WSJ increasingly is behaving like apologist for big business?
They probably always were, just now I am noticing.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#7No matter how this story ends (whether they eventually ends up with having a fully functioning product or not) this should be a cautionary tale to anyone wanting to actually change the world in healthcare.
Science speaks for itself and does not care how much you raised at what valuation. It requires a rigorous approach to testings and facts and data or it will be merciless if you aren't living up to your own claims.
So hopefully next time someone has a great disruptive idea in healthcare, they will spend a little more time getting the science and tech right before they start worrying about becoming a unicorn.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#8The key questions that needs to be addressed, is how homogenous or heterogenous are blood markers at the level they want to measure at? The machines may be reporting results accurately, but a pin-prick-sized droplet may simply not be a large enough sample size for the tests they want to run.
There was a recent publication on this subject in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology (http://news.rice.edu/2015/11/17/blood-test-results-vary-from...):
> Bond and Richards-Kortum found that averaging the results of the droplet tests could produce results that were on par with venous blood tests, but tests on six to nine drops blood were needed to achieve consistent results.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#9I like how Holmes' recollection of meetings is always different than the other attendees. Only one machine had an error message, not all three. She didn't abruptly walk out of the meeting. She didn't refuse to answer a question due to "trade secrets". And so on.
Re: At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags
#10I'm honestly getting kind of annoyed with seeing stuff about Theranos, since everyone writing about them is beating about the bush, and only ends up describing how Theranos communicates with a startling lack of earnestness. Example from the video, paraphrased: Mod: "What prick tests are you able to do, using no commercially available lab equipment?" Holmes: "[lots of waffling] We're currently only doing the Herpes te…
A media interview is not a police room interrogation, nor a courtroom cross-examination. The interviewer (most probably) realises the question has not been properly answered but understands that they have to keep the interview moving. Also, if they go in too hard, it can have a backfiring effect of causing the audience to start sympathising with the person being interviewed (even though that person is clearly waffling and dissembling).
The interview is still effective in that hard-headed people watching the interview who need concrete answers and actual information will still draw their own (likely negative) conclusions.