10 ms·

I've talked to over 100 hematologists. This business, didn't pass a basic litmus test of objective criticism from people who work in the space. There seems to

I've talked to over 100 hematologists. This business, didn't pass a basic litmus test of objective criticism from people who work in the space. There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss. I think if there's an elephant in the room though, it probably should be assassinated with a huge body of transparent evidence.

logicallee 10y ago
I think Tharanos is a scam and misreported its results and capabilities. That said, your "litmus test" is dangerous and should not be used. If you had talked to 100 cab drivers about Uber, how many would have said it's a viable idea? Uber is actually WAY less viable than Theranos, because there are legal frameworks that made it literally illegal. Meanwhile Theranos is in a high-profit part of the medical industry, that is also (as you can see) regulated. The issue is that Theranos is a scam. That's the only issue, not any of the stuff you mention. Founder bravado exists because lots of parts of the world are stupid and wrong and done out of habit. Theranos isn't a scam due to bravado. It's a scam because it's not real. If it "happened to be" real and not a scam, your comment could read exactly the same, except it would happen to be wrong instead of right. Your generalization about startups is entirely unjustified, and makes it that much harder for people who are not running scams to actually change the world. Could I also venture a guess that you're not living in Silicon Valley? Your comment and others like it are the reason people don't change the world from the city you're living in, by creating a startup from scratch, but go and move to Silicon Valley to do it. If you have any examples of an Uber, an Airbnb, or a Tesla made in the city you're living in, go ahead and say it. These three companies have upended their respective markets (taxis, hotels, cars). You would have knifed them in their infancy, citing "founder bravado". This literally impedes progress. People shouldn't have to move to Silicon Valley to be able to change the world. None of this has ANYTHING to do with the fact that Theranos (and, to cite another example, that ultrasound charging company) are scams. They are scams ONLY because they're not real: not due to the opinions of the industries they're disrupting, and not because of bravado. Don't conflate the two.
- jacalata 10y ago
  Theranos was not viable because it was a scam and people in the industry thought exactly that. Unless you believe taxi drivers are all arguing that Uber doesn't actually provide rides, I don't think your argument makes sense.
  - logicallee 10y ago
    I'm arguing with the post that I replied to. This person wrote: >There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss which is a completely unfair generalization and hurts all founders, of all companies. You raise irrelevant points. But to answer you, yes, there was a time in the past when taxi drivers would have argued that Uber is a scam, yes. I did a date-range Google search, and look at this: http://observer.com/2012/10/uber-lawsuit-chicago-taxi-limousine-consumer-fraud-unlawful-practices-travis-kalanick/ http://observer.com/2012/10/uber-lawsuit-chicago-taxi-limous... "Uber Sued for Consumer Fraud and Unlawful Practices by Chicago Taxi and Limo Companies". (2012) Consumer fraud means scam. So, please, jacalata, I would like you to say: -> "All right, Taxi cab companies did accuse Uber of being a scam, i.e. of consumer fraud, in 2012. The only difference between this an Theranos is that Uber was real and Theranos is not real." I want to hear you say this, because of the part of the comment that I quoted, stating "There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss". I'd love for you to agree that that signal or litmus test is irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is whether it's actually a scam. Theranos was actually a scam - it didn't really do what it claimed at all, for which it is under criminal (criminal!) investigation. It has nothing, zip, zero, zilch, to do with Silicon Valley or founders, or bravado, or what the industry insiders were saying.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      It should probably be noted that nearly all founder bravado is misplaced, just from a mathematical standpoint, as nearly all startup founders are helming failing businesses. Whether that is a feature or a bug I suppose is a different question.
- 10y ago
ryporter 10y ago
To be fair, that is how innovation occurs. There are many examples of "ridiculous" ideas that ended being wildly successful. Where would Elon Musk be if he listened to all of the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work? Obviously, the putative innovators massively failed in this case, but I don't think that the outcome proves that their original idea was fatally flawed, or at least that it wasn't worth attempting.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  Theranos promised a faster, cheaper way of doing something. Tesla built a very expensive sports-car, before they advanced towards cheaper products for the masses.
  - ryporter 10y ago
    I was actually thinking more about SpaceX. They promised technology that was faster (in terms of development speed) and cheaper.
    - cel1ne 10y ago
      Isn't that because they could work outside many bureaucratic regulations and Musk's focus on the essential?
      - jakub_h 10y ago
        Regulations don't prevent you from inventing new things, only from inflicting them onto the whole of the society. But they didn't invent anything useful in the first place, so arguing that regulations were what stopped them is silly.
        cel1ne 10y ago
        Regulation was a wrong word. Disclaimer: I don't know much about how SpaceX or NASA's finances work. But I assumed that, due to their tighter coupling with a government, NASA has less leeway in their decisions of which technologies to research compared to SpaceX.
drjesusphd 10y ago
One sees the the same thing in nuclear fusion. All these companies popping up that aren't bothering to consult experts and will have to learn lessons the hard way.
- atroyn 10y ago
  Most of the fusion companies I've seen founded lately are led by people who have been scientists in this field for decades. To which companies of you refer?
  - drjesusphd 10y ago
    I guess I'm thinking about Lockheed Martin and EMC2. They're both taking taxpayer money for discredited approaches (mirror and cusp confinement, respectively).
    - atroyn 10y ago
      What are your thoughts on Helion?
      - drjesusphd 10y ago
        Don't know much about it I'm afraid.
brbsix 10y ago
There appear to be two different sorts of "disruption": 1) There's disruption that's seen as impractical or insanely difficult (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX). Or technically feasible but with significant social or legal obstables (e.g. AirBnB, Uber). 2) Then there's another category, disruption that defies laws of physics. Kickstarter is replete with examples. This includes things like pocket-size underwater rebreaters, self-filling water bottles, and solar-powered motorcycles. I'm no expert in the subject matter but Theranos tech seems to be in the latter.
- ryporter 10y ago
  What law of physics makes what Theranos attempted to achieve impossible? They were still drawing blood from the patient. Thus, it seems theoretically possible for technology to overcome the challenges the approach presents.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    The law of sample sizes? If I ask one person who they are going to vote for I can't tell you who is going to win the election.
  - pfortuny 10y ago
    Concentration is a global property which cannot be assessed locally in a fluid.
    - danellis 10y ago
      So all blood tests are useless?
      - dingo_bat 10y ago
        Blood tests use a relatively large amount of blood to counter the problem. Also many blood tests are repeated multiple times before the doctor produces the final diagnosis. So multiple units of blood from a vein distributed over days vs a pinprick's worth of blood from a finger.
_pmf_ 10y ago
Can someone explain me how Theranos' claim is anything else than me claiming that I can do a representative study with 5 participants and have the same statistical significance as others doing a study with 10000 participants? Isn't this just elementary statistics and completely independent from the domain?
- DougBTX 10y ago
  If it is known beforehand that all the participants will answer in the same way, testing 5 will produce as much information as testing 10000, so the question is whether any beforehand assertion like that applies. One reason that assertion might not hold is if the 5 being tested come from a special interest group, knowing if that could be the case or not depends on domain knowledge. http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume17Number1/composition_differences.asp http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume17Number1/compos... So, it is known that small samples of blood taken from capillaries will have a different composition than large samples taken from veins. Is it possible to write a test that compensates for the known differences? Or is it just known that they are so different that one can't be inferred from the other? Hard to tell, needs cutting edge domain knowledge.
  - umanwizard 10y ago
    You're confusing random variation (which is helped by sample size) and bias (which isn't)
    - DougBTX 10y ago
      My example in the first paragraph has no random variation to explain how a test of 5 people could provide the same information as a test of 10000. The second example includes bias as a lead-in to the actual problems that tests of capillary blood need to handle.

logicallee 10y ago

I think Tharanos is a scam and misreported its results and capabilities. That said, your "litmus test" is dangerous and should not be used. If you had talked to 100 cab drivers about Uber, how many would have said it's a viable idea? Uber is actually WAY less viable than Theranos, because there are legal frameworks that made it literally illegal. Meanwhile Theranos is in a high-profit part of the medical industry, that is also (as you can see) regulated. The issue is that Theranos is a scam. That's the only issue, not any of the stuff you mention. Founder bravado exists because lots of parts of the world are stupid and wrong and done out of habit. Theranos isn't a scam due to bravado. It's a scam because it's not real. If it "happened to be" real and not a scam, your comment could read exactly the same, except it would happen to be wrong instead of right. Your generalization about startups is entirely unjustified, and makes it that much harder for people who are not running scams to actually change the world. Could I also venture a guess that you're not living in Silicon Valley? Your comment and others like it are the reason people don't change the world from the city you're living in, by creating a startup from scratch, but go and move to Silicon Valley to do it. If you have any examples of an Uber, an Airbnb, or a Tesla made in the city you're living in, go ahead and say it. These three companies have upended their respective markets (taxis, hotels, cars). You would have knifed them in their infancy, citing "founder bravado". This literally impedes progress. People shouldn't have to move to Silicon Valley to be able to change the world. None of this has ANYTHING to do with the fact that Theranos (and, to cite another example, that ultrasound charging company) are scams. They are scams ONLY because they're not real: not due to the opinions of the industries they're disrupting, and not because of bravado. Don't conflate the two.

jacalata 10y ago
Theranos was not viable because it was a scam and people in the industry thought exactly that. Unless you believe taxi drivers are all arguing that Uber doesn't actually provide rides, I don't think your argument makes sense.
- logicallee 10y ago
  I'm arguing with the post that I replied to. This person wrote: >There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss which is a completely unfair generalization and hurts all founders, of all companies. You raise irrelevant points. But to answer you, yes, there was a time in the past when taxi drivers would have argued that Uber is a scam, yes. I did a date-range Google search, and look at this: http://observer.com/2012/10/uber-lawsuit-chicago-taxi-limousine-consumer-fraud-unlawful-practices-travis-kalanick/ http://observer.com/2012/10/uber-lawsuit-chicago-taxi-limous... "Uber Sued for Consumer Fraud and Unlawful Practices by Chicago Taxi and Limo Companies". (2012) Consumer fraud means scam. So, please, jacalata, I would like you to say: -> "All right, Taxi cab companies did accuse Uber of being a scam, i.e. of consumer fraud, in 2012. The only difference between this an Theranos is that Uber was real and Theranos is not real." I want to hear you say this, because of the part of the comment that I quoted, stating "There seems to be this bravado among founders who believe they're sticking it to all the people who say something's amiss". I'd love for you to agree that that signal or litmus test is irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is whether it's actually a scam. Theranos was actually a scam - it didn't really do what it claimed at all, for which it is under criminal (criminal!) investigation. It has nothing, zip, zero, zilch, to do with Silicon Valley or founders, or bravado, or what the industry insiders were saying.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    It should probably be noted that nearly all founder bravado is misplaced, just from a mathematical standpoint, as nearly all startup founders are helming failing businesses. Whether that is a feature or a bug I suppose is a different question.
10y ago

ryporter 10y ago

To be fair, that is how innovation occurs. There are many examples of "ridiculous" ideas that ended being wildly successful. Where would Elon Musk be if he listened to all of the incumbents who said that his ideas would never work? Obviously, the putative innovators massively failed in this case, but I don't think that the outcome proves that their original idea was fatally flawed, or at least that it wasn't worth attempting.

cel1ne 10y ago
Theranos promised a faster, cheaper way of doing something. Tesla built a very expensive sports-car, before they advanced towards cheaper products for the masses.
- ryporter 10y ago
  I was actually thinking more about SpaceX. They promised technology that was faster (in terms of development speed) and cheaper.
  - cel1ne 10y ago
    Isn't that because they could work outside many bureaucratic regulations and Musk's focus on the essential?
    - jakub_h 10y ago
      Regulations don't prevent you from inventing new things, only from inflicting them onto the whole of the society. But they didn't invent anything useful in the first place, so arguing that regulations were what stopped them is silly.
      - cel1ne 10y ago
        Regulation was a wrong word. Disclaimer: I don't know much about how SpaceX or NASA's finances work. But I assumed that, due to their tighter coupling with a government, NASA has less leeway in their decisions of which technologies to research compared to SpaceX.

drjesusphd 10y ago

One sees the the same thing in nuclear fusion. All these companies popping up that aren't bothering to consult experts and will have to learn lessons the hard way.

atroyn 10y ago
Most of the fusion companies I've seen founded lately are led by people who have been scientists in this field for decades. To which companies of you refer?
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  I guess I'm thinking about Lockheed Martin and EMC2. They're both taking taxpayer money for discredited approaches (mirror and cusp confinement, respectively).
  - atroyn 10y ago
    What are your thoughts on Helion?
    - drjesusphd 10y ago
      Don't know much about it I'm afraid.

brbsix 10y ago

There appear to be two different sorts of "disruption": 1) There's disruption that's seen as impractical or insanely difficult (e.g. Tesla, SpaceX). Or technically feasible but with significant social or legal obstables (e.g. AirBnB, Uber). 2) Then there's another category, disruption that defies laws of physics. Kickstarter is replete with examples. This includes things like pocket-size underwater rebreaters, self-filling water bottles, and solar-powered motorcycles. I'm no expert in the subject matter but Theranos tech seems to be in the latter.

ryporter 10y ago
What law of physics makes what Theranos attempted to achieve impossible? They were still drawing blood from the patient. Thus, it seems theoretically possible for technology to overcome the challenges the approach presents.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  The law of sample sizes? If I ask one person who they are going to vote for I can't tell you who is going to win the election.
- pfortuny 10y ago
  Concentration is a global property which cannot be assessed locally in a fluid.
  - danellis 10y ago
    So all blood tests are useless?
    - dingo_bat 10y ago
      Blood tests use a relatively large amount of blood to counter the problem. Also many blood tests are repeated multiple times before the doctor produces the final diagnosis. So multiple units of blood from a vein distributed over days vs a pinprick's worth of blood from a finger.

_pmf_ 10y ago

Can someone explain me how Theranos' claim is anything else than me claiming that I can do a representative study with 5 participants and have the same statistical significance as others doing a study with 10000 participants? Isn't this just elementary statistics and completely independent from the domain?

DougBTX 10y ago
If it is known beforehand that all the participants will answer in the same way, testing 5 will produce as much information as testing 10000, so the question is whether any beforehand assertion like that applies. One reason that assertion might not hold is if the 5 being tested come from a special interest group, knowing if that could be the case or not depends on domain knowledge. http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume17Number1/composition_differences.asp http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume17Number1/compos... So, it is known that small samples of blood taken from capillaries will have a different composition than large samples taken from veins. Is it possible to write a test that compensates for the known differences? Or is it just known that they are so different that one can't be inferred from the other? Hard to tell, needs cutting edge domain knowledge.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  You're confusing random variation (which is helped by sample size) and bias (which isn't)
  - DougBTX 10y ago
    My example in the first paragraph has no random variation to explain how a test of 5 people could provide the same information as a test of 10000. The second example includes bias as a lead-in to the actual problems that tests of capillary blood need to handle.