3 ms·

"Non-peer-reviewed"? This is a private company with proprietary technology, not the New England Journal of Medicine. Proprietary and peer-reviewed are oxymoroni

"Non-peer-reviewed"? This is a private company with proprietary technology, not the New England Journal of Medicine. Proprietary and peer-reviewed are oxymoronic in this context.

jerryhuang100 10y ago
in medical/scientific realm, claims are peer-reviewed to be valid.
- crygin 10y ago
  Heh, this is, bluntly... untrue. In medicine, certain types of published studies are sometimes peer-reviewed, and sometimes people care about that, and that's about the extent of peer review as far as validity goes. Drug studies are not peer-reviewed in any meaningful way, and that's about as statistically strong a claim as exists in most of medicine. Medtech (implants, mechanisms, Theranos-like processes, etc) are certainly never "peer-reviewed".
  - jerryhuang100 10y ago
    drug studies (or medtech) might not need to be peer-reviewed, but their underlining principles / entity / mechanism are peer-reviewed as scientific discovery. T is totally not the case. in fact its claim for using tiny amount of blood for medical diagnostics and its clinical results are disputed and questioned by comparing to its peers in peer-reviewed journals.
  - adenadel 10y ago
    That's only true if you don't consider FDA approval to be a form of peer review.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      Although in theory FDA approval should be equivalent to scientific peer review, in practice it doesn't seem to be. It's not unusual for independent testing to show effects significantly smaller than those reported in the clinical trials that lead to FDA approval. Sometimes the results approach placebo levels.
  - saeranv 10y ago
    Why not? Everything I've read about Theranos seems to suggest she should have been subjecting some part of her process to peer review. “I don’t know if she’s another Steve Jobs,” said Jerry Yeo, professor of pathology at the University of Chicago and director of the Clinical Chemistry Laboratories there. “You have to subject yourself to peer review. You can’t just go in a stealthy mode and then announce one day that you’ve got technology that’s going to disrupt the world.” Professor Yeo said that he and his colleagues wanted to see data and testing in independent labs. “We have a small army of people ready and willing to test Theranos’s products if they’d ask us,” he said. “And that can be done without revealing any trade secrets.” [1] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/the-narrative-frays-for-theranos-and-elizabeth-holmes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/the-narrative-fra...
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  Being peer-reviewed does not mean that a claim is valid; it was never intended to mean that, or to be a stamp of approval on the merits or results of research. Peer-review is just intended to keep the obvious crap out of journals. It's an opportunity for paper authors to face objective questions from experts about things like their methodology, why did they do it this way instead of that way, are they aware of this potentially related work, why didn't they address this potential objection, etc. It's also not unusual for scientific work originating in businesses to seek publication long after it has found application in the business. For example Google staff have published some important papers in computer science; but usually long after Google the product started using those techniques. Now that they are under attack, Theranos' position would be greatly strengthened by having some peer-reviewed papers to wave around to show some legitimacy. But--the fact that they don't have those papers is not, by itself, proof that they are frauds. It does seem likely that they are frauds--but that's because of direct investigation and reporting of their methods, not because of peer-review (or lack thereof).
keymone 10y ago
i thought that is why patents exist: you make sure your stuff works, apply for patent and get everybody to peer-review it without being able to take advantage.

"Non-peer-reviewed"? This is a private company with proprietary technology, not the New England Journal of Medicine. Proprietary and peer-reviewed are oxymoronic in this context.

jerryhuang100 10y ago

in medical/scientific realm, claims are peer-reviewed to be valid.

crygin 10y ago
Heh, this is, bluntly... untrue. In medicine, certain types of published studies are sometimes peer-reviewed, and sometimes people care about that, and that's about the extent of peer review as far as validity goes. Drug studies are not peer-reviewed in any meaningful way, and that's about as statistically strong a claim as exists in most of medicine. Medtech (implants, mechanisms, Theranos-like processes, etc) are certainly never "peer-reviewed".
- jerryhuang100 10y ago
  drug studies (or medtech) might not need to be peer-reviewed, but their underlining principles / entity / mechanism are peer-reviewed as scientific discovery. T is totally not the case. in fact its claim for using tiny amount of blood for medical diagnostics and its clinical results are disputed and questioned by comparing to its peers in peer-reviewed journals.
- adenadel 10y ago
  That's only true if you don't consider FDA approval to be a form of peer review.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Although in theory FDA approval should be equivalent to scientific peer review, in practice it doesn't seem to be. It's not unusual for independent testing to show effects significantly smaller than those reported in the clinical trials that lead to FDA approval. Sometimes the results approach placebo levels.
- saeranv 10y ago
  Why not? Everything I've read about Theranos seems to suggest she should have been subjecting some part of her process to peer review. “I don’t know if she’s another Steve Jobs,” said Jerry Yeo, professor of pathology at the University of Chicago and director of the Clinical Chemistry Laboratories there. “You have to subject yourself to peer review. You can’t just go in a stealthy mode and then announce one day that you’ve got technology that’s going to disrupt the world.” Professor Yeo said that he and his colleagues wanted to see data and testing in independent labs. “We have a small army of people ready and willing to test Theranos’s products if they’d ask us,” he said. “And that can be done without revealing any trade secrets.” [1] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/the-narrative-frays-for-theranos-and-elizabeth-holmes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/the-narrative-fra...
snowwrestler 10y ago
Being peer-reviewed does not mean that a claim is valid; it was never intended to mean that, or to be a stamp of approval on the merits or results of research. Peer-review is just intended to keep the obvious crap out of journals. It's an opportunity for paper authors to face objective questions from experts about things like their methodology, why did they do it this way instead of that way, are they aware of this potentially related work, why didn't they address this potential objection, etc. It's also not unusual for scientific work originating in businesses to seek publication long after it has found application in the business. For example Google staff have published some important papers in computer science; but usually long after Google the product started using those techniques. Now that they are under attack, Theranos' position would be greatly strengthened by having some peer-reviewed papers to wave around to show some legitimacy. But--the fact that they don't have those papers is not, by itself, proof that they are frauds. It does seem likely that they are frauds--but that's because of direct investigation and reporting of their methods, not because of peer-review (or lack thereof).

keymone 10y ago

i thought that is why patents exist: you make sure your stuff works, apply for patent and get everybody to peer-review it without being able to take advantage.