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Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 7:00 pm

[Starting this in the BP... if it veers too deeply into R&P territory, we'll move it there.]

Has anyone been following the sordid saga of Theranos? The latest chapter:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... y-s-office

Seems like a classic case of "over-promise and under-deliver"... which is all too common in the tech industry, and wouldn't be such big news if it didn't jeopardize people's health, or if the company wasn't valued at $9 billion (well, I guess not any more...), or if the company hadn't had such luminaries as Henry Kissinger and George Schultz on its board, or if the CEO hadn't been a charismatic (and female) Steve-Jobs-wannabe.

I'm not quite ready to say that Holmes (the CEO) *intentionally* misled people (though her underlings very well may have). But after reading a lot of the background material, I think she's definitely at least delusional... IOW, best case she's applied that Jobs-style RDF to herself.

When your Chief Scientist commits suicide after telling his wife "nothing works", that's a really frikkin' big red flag! How this technology made it out into the field in spite of this baffles me.

Some additional background for the morbidly curious:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/201 ... onths.html
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/ ... ignorance/
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/theranos-f ... -shutdown/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-ha ... 1444881901
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/201 ... rocks.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/ ... mes-report
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Re: Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:34 pm

Not sure if the company was just some kind of ruse (tax evasion, money laundering, milking grants) or just a victim of plain old incompetence.
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Re: Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:11 pm

My take is that the founder/CEO believed that they could do what they claimed... but reality eventually intervened. Then, when things started to go south, instead of admitting defeat they inexplicably doubled down and pushed their flawed product to market anyhow, hoping they could fix it before anyone noticed.
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Re: Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:26 pm

just brew it! wrote:
My take is that the founder/CEO believed that they could do what they claimed... but reality eventually intervened. Then, when things started to go south, instead of admitting defeat they inexplicably doubled down and pushed their flawed product to market anyhow, hoping they could fix it before anyone noticed.


I agree.

BTW have you seen their board of directors? I thought it was freaking Lockheed or some other defense company. Makes you wonder what they're really cooking under the labs.
https://www.theranos.com/leadership
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Re: Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:34 pm

I haven't really followed it, but that board roster and the founder's behavior and backstory all reek of political shenanigans. Can't say I'm surprised.
 
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Re: Theranos

Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:46 pm

ThatStupidCat wrote:
BTW have you seen their board of directors? I thought it was freaking Lockheed or some other defense company. Makes you wonder what they're really cooking under the labs.


Paper clips

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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:14 am

Captain Ned wrote:
ThatStupidCat wrote:
BTW have you seen their board of directors? I thought it was freaking Lockheed or some other defense company. Makes you wonder what they're really cooking under the labs.


Paper clips

[/ducks]


F.E.V research? /jk
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:39 am

It would take you 2,363 continuous hours or 98 days,11 hours, and 35 minutes of gameplay to complete your Steam library.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:05 am

Elizabeth Holmes the female wannabe version of Steve Jobs right down to the black turtleneck. But there's one huge difference between her and Jobs, Jobs had actual products! Hers are made up, in her head.

I saw the 60 minutes episode where they talk to her about Theranos, I believed then as I believe now that she is a charlatan.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:14 am

just brew it! wrote:
.... doubled down and pushed their flawed product to market ......



Product???? No one even they will disclose exactly what their testing procedures are. It's all still a mystery. Even after the FDA and CMS questioned the validity of some of the results in which they say some of the diseases/afflictions/ailments could not possibly be identified from a single drop of blood. Which is the number one thing that Theranos claims.

Now Holmes is claiming ignorance. Oh an yesterday's interview on NBC she gave up the Steve Jobs look for a business suit.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:20 am

She's lucky she got off with just a ban, because I don't think criminal charges were out of the question given the nature of the whole affair. This whole thing screams fraudulent, down to their reactions to any journalist who questioned any aspect of their claims or simply reported the bare facts of regulatory involvement.
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:41 am

tanker27 wrote:
Product???? No one even they will disclose exactly what their testing procedures are. It's all still a mystery. Even after the FDA and CMS questioned the validity of some of the results in which they say some of the diseases/afflictions/ailments could not possibly be identified from a single drop of blood. Which is the number one thing that Theranos claims.

I'm convinced they have *something*; It just doesn't work very well (it sounds like it is still essentially a "proof of concept" prototype at this point). Furthermore, they knew (or should have known) this several years ago, when their Chief Scientist committed suicide. I don't believe Holmes originally set out a decade ago to perpetrate a massive fraud (though it appears to have ended that way).

Doing something like this intentionally, from the start, would've been the height of lunacy. There is no way it could've possibly ended well.

I'm also convinced that a big part of the problem here was the lack of medical expertise on the board (Holmes had no medical background either). Nobody to say "Whoa, we've gone off the rails, we need to pull back and rethink this!"

tanker27 wrote:
Now Holmes is claiming ignorance. Oh an yesterday's interview on NBC she gave up the Steve Jobs look for a business suit.

Like I said, I think maybe she bought into her own RDF. But if she was truly ignorant of what was going on in her own company, she was an incompetent CEO at best.

Glorious wrote:
She's lucky she got off with just a ban, because I don't think criminal charges were out of the question given the nature of the whole affair. This whole thing screams fraudulent, down to their reactions to any journalist who questioned any aspect of their claims or simply reported the bare facts of regulatory involvement.

She hasn't been banned yet, but a ban and/or criminal charges are looking increasingly likely.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:51 am

just brew it! wrote:
I don't believe Holmes originally set out a decade ago to perpetrate a massive fraud (though it appears to have ended that way).


I don't think so either, but it's really not all that relevant. If people are going to perpetrate a long-con, generally they would have had put some forethought into the exit part of the scam.

The point is, as you say, that there is no reasonable doubt that she knew something was grievously wrong years ago but yet she still continued to proceed as if everything was fine and that anyone who said or implied anything different was the villain, not her.

JBI wrote:
She hasn't been banned yet, but a ban and/or criminal charges are looking increasingly likely.


Yeah I was wrong, it hasn't happened yet but the ban is already in the works and it doesn't look like there is any chance of it not happening at this point.

And yeah, it looks more like we are merely in the opening stages of her ordeal, not a deal that closes the book on it.
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:06 am

I read your thread title, but my mind went to this.
http://screenrant.com/marvel-avengers-b ... /?view=all
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:13 am

"IF" she does have something it probably would be in her and Theranos' best interest to maybe partner up with another testing lab/agency/company to bring whatever product that there still is to fruition. But this may be a forgone option at this point.

I am a skeptical person at best, her and Theranos' claims to test for a wide variety of things through a single finger prick and a single blood drop seems dubious to me. When 60 Minutes first ran the story last year I was very skeptical then as I am now. I do think she perpetuated a long con.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 8:35 am

Well looks like the Jig is up. WSJ is reporting that the investigation has turned to criminal.....

http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-is ... 1461019055
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 8:55 am

tanker27 wrote:
"IF" she does have something it probably would be in her and Theranos' best interest to maybe partner up with another testing lab/agency/company to bring whatever product that there still is to fruition. But this may be a forgone option at this point.

Who would partner with them at this point? They're toxic from a PR standpoint.

Best case, maybe someone would be willing to acquire their IP for a small fraction of their peak market valuation, on the off chance that there's some value there... I would think for something on the order of 1% (which would in turn represent just a bit more than 10% of the amount originally pumped into them by investors).

tanker27 wrote:
Well looks like the Jig is up. WSJ is reporting that the investigation has turned to criminal.....

http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-is ... 1461019055

The criminal probe was mentioned in my first link.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 9:17 am

FWIW, I'd been following her specifically (up and coming potential leaders sometimes interest me more than the widget/service they sell), and I'm in the camp I think with OP. I think she seriously, 100% believed in the product. Which was OK, except after all the revelations I think she still hasn't come around to the full reality of it, which means she's internalized the RDF. That's dangerous. She had warning signs. The RDF meant she dismissed them.

It might just mean she's human (internet detractors forget that about almost everybody), but her future depends on how she recovers, if she exits denial. She's young and could have several more startups ahead. It'd be nice to have a female Elon Musk, right?
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 9:17 am

Glorious wrote:
JBI wrote:
She hasn't been banned yet, but a ban and/or criminal charges are looking increasingly likely.

Yeah I was wrong, it hasn't happened yet but the ban is already in the works and it doesn't look like there is any chance of it not happening at this point.

It is conceivable she could escape criminal prosecution by cutting some sort of deal. E.g., not fighting the ban and agreeing to civil penalties of some sort. I suspect that if she continues to fight they'll throw the book at her.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 9:28 am

As an aside, WTF was Walgreens thinking, entering into a partnership with them -- and rolling out testing services for actual patients -- without any evidence that their "revolutionary" testing device worked? That must be a pretty damned impressive RDF generator! (Or Theranos outright lied to Walgreens execs... I guess we'll find out eventually, as this debacle plays out.)
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 9:42 am

w76 wrote:
FWIW, I'd been following her specifically (up and coming potential leaders sometimes interest me more than the widget/service they sell), and I'm in the camp I think with OP. I think she seriously, 100% believed in the product. Which was OK, except after all the revelations I think she still hasn't come around to the full reality of it, which means she's internalized the RDF. That's dangerous. She had warning signs. The RDF meant she dismissed them.


The problem I have with that though, specifically with the Jobs comparison, is that Jobs was *IN* the garage with Wozniak et al. He understood how the stuff all worked.

Even in the heyday of the RDF, which was *after* that, it was unreasonable expectations and outrageous behavior, not that whatever product being developed simply did not work at all. Apple consistently produced products, and even the canonical failures were completely functional, even if somewhat flawed. Same deal with Nextstep, he might oversold it but it wasn't as if the investors didn't realize they were gambling on more on Jobs than anything else. Either way, the product was delivered and it worked.

With Holmes, well, it's always been just this one thing. This one idea, that for like over ten years now, has *never* worked.

You know, that's sort of important. In fact, it's the only thing that actually matters.

If the fact that someone believes in something matters at all, well, we might as well just hire a series of extreme maniac-depressives when they are deep in the grips of their mania, right? We'll get lots of drive, belief and passion, and just replace them when they start to burn out into depression. :wink: :lol:

Like, even if it functions as a criminal defense, it doesn't excuse anything else. And, honestly, with the most recent years being full of obfuscation, shenanigans, regulatory evasion, etc... come on, she knew or has no excuse to not know. Like we can excuse "...but we'll get in working in time!" as an honest kind of wrongdoing, but not when it hasn't worked in over TEN YEARS and you have no actual reason to believe it'll suddenly start working in time either (because as JBI has been trying hard to point out, A LEAD SCIENTIST LITERALLY COMMITTED SUICIDE saying to his widow "nothing works" who you then threat to SUE for defamation :o :o :o :o :o :o ).
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:20 am

Glorious pretty much sums up how I feel about Theranos and Holmes. I do not think her playing as the innocent bystander is going to pass.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:26 am

tanker27 wrote:
Glorious pretty much sums up how I feel about Theranos and Holmes. I do not think her playing as the innocent bystander is going to pass.

Well, yeah. The buck has to stop somewhere; and as the founder and CEO...

Best case, she's incompetent/negligent/delusional, and managed to hide that fact from everyone for over a decade. Worst case, it was a scam from the get-go. I figure the truth is somewhere in the middle, but closer to the former than the latter (I think the "scammy" aspects crept in little by little, slippery slope fashion, as reality set in and things started to go south).
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:51 am

just brew it! wrote:
Best case, she's incompetent/negligent/delusional, and managed to hide that fact from everyone for over a decade. Worst case, it was a scam from the get-go. I figure the truth is somewhere in the middle, but closer to the former than the latter (I think the "scammy" aspects crept in little by little, slippery slope fashion, as reality set in and things started to go south).

If it was a scam, she would've had to start planning in her early-twenties, which doesn't seem plausible, since at that point you don't have enough life experience to know how to game the system. Also, if you're just looking to run a scam, medical testing is a really really poor choice of field, not to mention that she seems to have made no attempt at an exit strategy.

I'm going with "incompetent/negligent/delusional, and managed to hide that fact from everyone for over a decade".
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 1:57 pm

The Egg wrote:
If it was a scam, she would've had to start planning in her early-twenties, which doesn't seem plausible, since at that point you don't have enough life experience to know how to game the system.


Most certainly. She dropped out of Stanford a semester after creating Theranos according to her Bio.

Curiously enough her Bio also states "As of 2014, Holmes had 18 US patents and 66 non-US patents in her name. She is also listed as a co-inventor on over 100 patent applications." So there might very well be something there. We all know about patents, she may very well have "dreamed" these things up and are just sitting on them until someone does try and make something similar, only to unleash a flurry of lawsuits. BUT we all know that almost never happens. :roll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:03 pm

The patent troll angle doesn't make sense. If she was a patent troll she would not have maintained such a high public profile, or attempted to commercialize the tech herself.

That said, it is entirely possible that a patent troll could pick up her patents in the aftermath of Theranos' implosion. If she ends up facing criminal charges, she may even be tempted to auction them off to help pay for her own defense.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:13 pm

Glorious wrote:
The problem I have with that though, specifically with the Jobs comparison, is that Jobs was *IN* the garage with Wozniak et al. He understood how the stuff all worked.

Even in the heyday of the RDF, which was *after* that, it was unreasonable expectations and outrageous behavior, not that whatever product being developed simply did not work at all. Apple consistently produced products, and even the canonical failures were completely functional, even if somewhat flawed. Same deal with Nextstep, he might oversold it but it wasn't as if the investors didn't realize they were gambling on more on Jobs than anything else. Either way, the product was delivered and it worked.

With Holmes, well, it's always been just this one thing. This one idea, that for like over ten years now, has *never* worked.

You know, that's sort of important. In fact, it's the only thing that actually matters.

I don't like the Jobs comparison either, based on what I've read about her the dress code and media hero-worship are about the only similarities. For better or worse, Steve Jobs was notoriously product-focused and wouldn't let something out of R&D until it was 100% exactly the product he wanted. No betas, no early launches, no test-in-production, he'd just show up at an event and unveil his new toy. Elizabeth Holmes, best I can tell, has spent her adult life doing little more than lecturing the world about how she's obviously a brilliant visionary because she says so and anyone who asks about the product is part of a grand conspiracy to oppress brilliant visionaries. Though to be fair, at least some of this is clearly coming from others who saw her as a useful resource for crafting an R&P-tinted business narrative.

One of the reasons I dislike America's quasi-religious obsession with Steve Jobs is it's spawned many terrible knockoffs who didn't read the whole story and just think that being dogmatic and PR-focused will get them untold fame and fortune. That's not how it works.
 
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 2:22 pm

I don't get the whole Jobs/Apple worship thing. Yes, they build shiny, (usually) well-engineered, highly anticipated products. But are they good value for the money? That's debatable, IMO.

It seems pretty clear that Holmes idolized (and attempted to emulate) Jobs in some ways, but as you say, didn't seem to fully grasp the "you actually need to deliver something" part of the equation.
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 3:17 pm

lecturing the world about how she's obviously a brilliant visionary because she says so


That sounds like a sweet gig; any advice on pursuing it ? :lol:
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Re: Theranos

Tue Apr 19, 2016 3:49 pm

paulWTAMU wrote:
lecturing the world about how she's obviously a brilliant visionary because she says so

That sounds like a sweet gig; any advice on pursuing it ? :lol:

Simple: Go to Harvard; come up with an idea that sounds too good to be true, but is just plausible enough to get the attention of venture capitalists; drop out of school; use your family connections to convince a bunch of former high-profile politicians and military officials to be members of your board; promote the heck out of yourself via interviews in high-profile business publications (did I mention connections?); and finally... profit? (I'm sure she wasn't counting on the "then watch it all implode around you because you mis-managed the development side of the operation and/or had unrealistic goals" part though.)
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