The “Dr Death” of lab testing

Started by caligas
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Bad Blood is great. It is a textbook description of how stupid people are, even rich/famous people. You'll encounter some very famous names who stopped thinking because of her good looks.

Even a child knows that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
 
Just read the Wikipedia page for Theranos if you can’t be arsed to read the book. But seriously, I couldn’t put the book down once I started reading it. A truly delicious mix of watching a trainwreck unfold in slow motion and the warm fuzzy feeling you get when the universe gets it right and lying dinguses eventually get what they deserve (schadenfreude?).
 
Temeraire said:
Just read the Wikipedia page for Theranos if you can’t be arsed to read the book. But seriously, I couldn’t put the book down once I started reading it. A truly delicious mix of watching a trainwreck unfold in slow motion and the warm fuzzy feeling you get when the universe gets it right and lying dinguses eventually get what they deserve (schadenfreude?).
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She's not behind bars yet. She should be locked up, and the key thrown away.

It's amazing that the great John Ioannidis of Stanford was one of the first to question the value of Theranos.
 
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So I first heard of this woman and her sham company about a year before she became a tech darling. I read a small piece in wired or some tech journal about her company and two things came into my mind immediately. First, the tech to run a large volume of lab tests on a small sample of blood has been around for years (iStat); granted she was promising an even smaller sample size. Second, she was FOS and there was no way she could come up with a new machine to run all the tests she claimed. If you have massive biotech companies like Abbott with their best engineers working on this issue I can imagine some new tech; but a college dropout with almost no bio/chemistry/engineering experience no way.
 
PainDrain said:
So I first heard of this woman and her sham company about a year before she became a tech darling. I read a small piece in wired or some tech journal about her company and two things came into my mind immediately. First, the tech to run a large volume of lab tests on a small sample of blood has been around for years (iStat); granted she was promising an even smaller sample size. Second, she was FOS and there was no way she could come up with a new machine to run all the tests she claimed. If you have massive biotech companies like Abbott with their best engineers working on this issue I can imagine some new tech; but a college dropout with almost no bio/chemistry/engineering experience no way.
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I first started reading about her at the same time. Her tech, as she described it, made no sense. I could not figure out how her samples would be obtained without serious contamination and accurate analyzation. I discussed it with one of my friends who is a hospital lab director, and she couldn’t figure it out either.

But, the thing that really struck me is when I looked at her board, the only medical/biotech member was Bill Frist.

Sure enough...
 
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If you want to see another total fraud look into uBeam. The founder came from UPenn with tech that purports to charge devices batteries using ultrasound. Now, I am no PhD physicist but I have a basic understanding of the law of conservation of energy and the level of energy that would be required to charge a phone via ultrasound waves would be immense. It wouldn’t be economically viable let alone practical.
 
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FFP said:
Bad Blood is great. It is a textbook description of how stupid people are, even rich/famous people. You'll encounter some very famous names who stopped thinking because of her good looks.

Even a child knows that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Click to expand...

You should hear her talk. She's been called out on her fake "man voice" which she put on purposely in order to sell an image as some mad scientist innovator. She's a loon....
 
The interesting part of the book to me is that because she was so well-connected and so charismatic she conned some very bright people (millionaires and billionaires). But a great deal of her access to these people came from familial/Stanford connections.

Other interrelated story line was how the hungry venture capitalists were so eager to be in on the ground floor of the next big thing that they didn’t scrutinize her scientifically to any degree really. Just blind faith.
 
GA8314 said:
You should hear her talk. She's been called out on her fake "man voice" which she put on purposely in order to sell an image as some mad scientist innovator. She's a loon....
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Wait, that voice is fake? Hahaha. She sounds like a trucker.
 
GA8314 said:
You should hear her talk. She's been called out on her fake "man voice" which she put on purposely in order to sell an image as some mad scientist innovator. She's a loon....
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I'm listening to the podcast. It's addictive, even if I already know the story.

Stupid men, throwing money at her with their loins, instead of their brains. It's just scary who was on her board, especially that those people had been allowed to run the country in the past.
 
FFP said:
She's not behind bars yet. She should be locked up, and the key thrown away.

It's amazing that the great John Ioannidis of Stanford was one of the first to question the value of Theranos.
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We know people who know her. She is gallivanting around the world on other people’s dime, and still being entertained as a potential start up entrepreneur in other areas.
 
cchoukal said:
We know people who know her. She is gallivanting around the world on other people’s dime, and still being entertained as a potential start up entrepreneur in other areas.
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How is that possible when she wasn’t just a failure but a criminal?
 
nimbus said:
Charming sociopath+wealthy scientifically illiterate people=strange things happen

And a celebrity is a celebrity.
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Charming? Is that a euphemism for ****able?

It's another proof that most people are dumb enough to not even recognize other dumb people (or their own biases: "I like that woman because I would enjoy bedding her"). That's why salesmen and con-men exist and thrive. Emotional "intelligence" my behind. If one lacks the IQ to learn advanced mathematics (when needed), one should think twice before trusting that brain about investing or anything advanced. The sad part is that dumb people like that were actually allowed in major leadership positions for the country.

There is a great saying in management: "A-players hire A-players. B-players hire C-players." It can be applied to a lot of social interactions and values. Holmes is human garbage, which only the *****s couldn't see. If it sounds too good to be true, it (more than) usually is. But, hey, common sense is not common (because what we call common sense is quite some level of IQ).
 
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