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Under Fire, Theranos CEO Stifled Bad News
- zerooneinfinity 10y agoCan't read due to paywall. Just curious, do people actually subscribe to WSJ or other paywall sites?
- niccaluim 10y agoClick "web".
- rjdagost 10y agoI actually do subscribe to the WSJ. You don't break stories like the Theranos sham with Buzzfeed style clickbait. Some things are worth paying for
- jc4p 10y agoI find this humorous because Buzzfeed, as weird as it is, did a great job breaking the story with their investigations into Zenefits, e.g. https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-zenefits-big-bet-on-sales-went-wrong https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-zenefits-big-bet-o...
- tuna-piano 10y agoIt's interesting, I assume many on here could afford to pay for WSJ, but don't, because the WSJ makes up only a small percentage of the content they want to read. The answer seems obvious - the industry needs an unlimited Spotify model that has the vast majority of content providers, and then pays out to the content providers by total minutes read. Why this hasn't happened yet is very interesting to me. The existing model for journalism seems to be similiar to if there was a Spotify type service for each record label - and you had to subscribe to 10 labels to listen to the music you wanted to listen to. This model made sense when there was a marginal cost (printing and delivering) - but that cost is basically gone for online readers. I love good journalism from the WSJ, NYTimes, WashPost, and many others. But no way am I going to subscribe to all of them - even though I want all of the content. Micropayments seem like way too much friction, and a decision (is this article worth it?) that is such a pain for consumers. Why can't they switch to the Spotify model?
- tomdale 10y agoI use https://blendle.com https://blendle.com, which is similar to what you describe. It really has diversified the number of sources I read.
- HelloMcFly 10y agoDoes any share of Blendle go to the content providers, or is it exclusively delivered to Blendle along?
- tuna-piano 10y agoIs that a micropayment model though? I can't imagine wanting to be bothered by paying for everything I read. For some reason, paying for stuff, even if only 25c, makes me think "Is it worth it?", and I hate that feeling.
- 55555 10y agoTotally agree. I would pay 50 cents per month, but I don't want to manage 50 different 50 cent subscriptions.
- breck 10y agoYes. I get the WSJ paper and online. They generally have deals (right now it's $1/week). The charts and data tables in the paper are probably the closest thing you can get to a business dashboard for the whole world. Fun to read each day to get a sense for everything from tech company valuations to the price of pork. Plus it's fun to have fresh reading material not on a screen. For $1 a week, one of the purchases I get the most value out of. I find it 10-100x more informative than any of the other papers, but I'm numbers oriented and others mileage may vary.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoThey generally have deals (right now it's $1/week). I used to subscribe back about 15 years ago when they first started charging. But I don't subscribe any more. The problem is the bait-and-switch. The intro price eventually goes away. Right now a 1 yr subscription, digital only, is $174. But right next to it on the website there's a bubble that says "over 50% off". So the non-discounted price is $350/yr? More? I get tired of shit like that. Charge me $50/yr and I'll pay. Keep jacking up my price and make me scrounge for discounts and I'll pass. Homie don't play dat!
- stonedge 10y agoI subscribe mostly for the physical paper. I rarely read it online, but it comes in handy for times like this. I think my most recent renewal was $100 for the year. Very small price to pay for top quality writing and news. I'd pay for the NYT as well if they actually delivered to my home.
- passivepinetree 10y agoCan someone provide a link to a non-paywalled version of the article? Or better yet, suggest a way so myself and others can find non-paywalled versions in the future on our own?
- amputect 10y agoHighlight the title, right click, search google for it, and click the wsj result. The wsj website displays articles for people coming in through google. This worked for me at any rate, and I wasn't able to see it by clicking the direct link.
- niccaluim 10y agoClick "web".
- tsuresh 10y agoClick the web button on the post and open any of the search results links.
- jszymborski 10y agohttp://archive.is/Bcops http://archive.is/Bcops Edit: for the future, you can just type "archive.is/" infront of the url.
- downandout 10y agoHit the "web" link above, which will bring up search results, and click over from Google. They can't pull the paywall nonsense when you click from Google, or they'll be delisted for cloaking. I specifically avoided using a WSJ link on a story that made it to the front page last week because of the paywall, and it was changed to the WSJ link by HN admins because of the "original source" policy. I wasn't particularly thrilled with this because I don't want to encourage paywalls, but apparently they are going to be a part of HN for the foreseeable future. So get familiar with the "web" link - you'll be using it a lot.
- yeukhon 10y agoTo escape paywall: 1. Google the title 2. Select the result directly from Google News 3. Right click on the article link, copies the link, put it in the browser. In the end, the link looks like this: http://news.google.be/news/url?sr=1&sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_0_0_i&usg=AFQjCNHik6tBeK0BnRXDTECzudeIKqVtBg&did=c6601fd2233d4a6e&cid=52779154246740&ei=ThCDV6CQBceM3QH4s4_oAQ&rt=STORY&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Funder-fire-theranos-ceo-stifled-bad-news-1468195377 http://news.google.be/news/url?sr=1&sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_0_0_... and if you really can't see it: https://bpaste.net/raw/0865ee15318e https://bpaste.net/raw/0865ee15318e
- niccaluim 10y agoThe "web" link does (1) for you.
- yeukhon 10y agoIt didn't show up (no cache, no web link for me)
- distracteddev90 10y agoTurning off javascript also removes most paywalls, even the ones that have started protecting against direct links from search results.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoThat works great for the NY Times paywall, but not WSJ. For WSJ I open a clean browser (empty cache, no cookies, no nothing) then hit the "web" link.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- joelS 10y ago"She has also been talking with Jason Blum, ... about a potential documentary that would chronicle her life and career" This is her priority right now?? For a while it has been clear she is more interested in self aggrandizement than ensuring her technology actually works.
- jszymborski 10y agoI'm wondering if this is maybe a response to the film Adam McKay ("Anchorman", "The Big Short") is making. http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/9/11896534/jennifer-lawrence-adam-mckay-theranos-movie-elizabeth-holmes http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/9/11896534/jennifer-lawrence-...
- downandout 10y agoShe's quite likely going to be indicted soon. $400 million fraud cases tend to not go unnoticed by the DOJ. Getting her story out may well be her priority.
- alva 10y agoI suspect the likelihood of receiving an indictment from the DOJ is somewhat linked to the depths of her ties to powerful politicians, present and future.
- downandout 10y agoI'm not sure they're on her side anymore....those people may actually want her indicted.
- forgingahead 10y agoDon't worry, Comey will not recommend prosecution so everything will be A-OK
- 1024core 10y agoDid you see the composition of her board? She's got some heavy-hitters there. No chance of an indictment.
- joshmn 10y agoOver/under on bail of $1MM? Any takers?
- tardo99 10y agoI've been calling for a perp walk for about 2 years now....
- known 10y agoShe looks cute :)
- tuna-piano 10y agoThis constant stream of Theranos might be viewed by some on the surface as beating a dead horse... but every article is new news of their shenanigans. And the most important bit - it seems like nothing has changed. It seems like they are continuing on the same path, as it seems like Elizabeth Holmes is completely out of touch with reality. Obviously this saga has thus far been negative for many of those involved - but I'm selfishly enjoying following the story. I'm curious to see how this ends. Theranos has hired some very good attorneys and I assume Walgreens and the consumer class actions will be interesting cases. One question: If Theranos needs to protect itself from a criminal / civil SEC investigation, do the Theranos executives get to use investor funds to defend themselves? If so, who does that help?
- GavinMcG 10y agoI would assume it can use investor funds. Presumably, if a defense is a rational choice compared to a settlement, the use of investor funds helps avoid the loss of even more investor funds.
- tuna-piano 10y agoI'm referring to the open criminal investigations against Theranos: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-18/theranos-is-under-investigation-by-sec-u-s-attorney-s-office http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-18/theranos-i... Is this investor money being used to defend against a suit about defrauding investors?
- otl1248 10y agoCompanies frequently defend themselves against shareholder lawsuits, and naturally that money would otherwise provide value for the shareholders. Also, if the SEC fines them the (current) investors will basically be punished!
- marcoperaza 10y agoOh fascinating, I hadn't thought about this before. So if the plaintiffs win a shareholder lawsuit, they're winning money at the expense of all of the other shareholders? And what about a class-action by all of the shareholders (is that even possible)? That'd just be the shareholders suing themselves? I guess that'd just be a forced liquidation/dividend in effect, right?
- sjwpccheck 10y agoThe real news people want to know is whom she has sex with. I would certainly rather use a Playboy spread than this WSJ pedantry.
- marcoperaza 10y agoI'd like to thank the Wall Street Journal for this saga that has filled my heart with ever-lasting schadenfreude. And it keeps getting better! >Ms. Holmes maintains a heavy security detail. Men with earpieces escort her wherever she goes outside the Palo Alto headquarters. Their code name for her is “Eagle 1,” current and former employees say. I'd also like to point out that the WSJ is being quite honorable here in going after Theranos so hard. A ton of the board members are from the Hoover Institution, which has close ties with the Journal. They're making a lot of their own people look bad. And it honestly is pitiful that they sat on this board of a company that they clearly knew absolutely nothing about, beyond Ms. Holme's deceptive pitches.
- 55555 10y ago> On July 1, Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee called on Theranos to explain how its “policies permitted systematic violations of federal law” and how it is “working with regulators to address these failures.” How come when I systematically violate federal law regulators seem less willing to work with me to address these failures? Companies are not that big and mystifying. They are just made up of people and should be held accountable. Elizabeth committed felonies and some people almost certainly died as a result.
- trhway 10y ago>Companies are not that big and mystifying. They are just made up of people and should be held accountable. Elizabeth committed felonies and some people almost certainly died as a result. Sending people to prison for crimes they commit while being executives - imagine prison overcrowding if US do the same as Iceland - the country of 300K sent 29 bankers to prison as result of 2008 crisis. US is 1000 times bigger.
- spangry 10y agoThat's your argument? There are too many corporate crooks so we shouldn't bother applying the law to them? Not even the most egregious ones? Why bother having a justice system in the first place? Hell, why bother having a society at all...
- braythwayt 10y agoPrisons are a for-profit industry, and filling prisons with people gets votes. There is absolutely no way that the DOJ is thinking, “I’d like to send these people to jail, but alas, there are aren’t enough jail cells.” The sad answer is simply that prisons are a kind of security theatre. For that theatre to work, you have to appear to be imprisoning people that voters emotionally identify as threats, Locking up street criminals, people of colour, and so forth fits in a world where the media and ruling politicians demonize them at every turn. Locking up business executives doesn’t.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoSo I'm curious. Should the people who took CS183C (Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman) discount the entire Holmes lecture? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juhATwufdbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juhATwufdbc
- jacquesm 10y agoOnly if your tech doesn't work.
- meowface 10y agoIs there any chance Theranos could possibly recover from all this? I'm kind of surprised they're still even operating. Maybe replace the CEO or something. The core idea of the technology still seems like a good one. It just needs rigorous testing and consent.
- spotman 10y agoGood idea; bad execution. It's an expensive to question to answer whether they are worth a second shot at this point. My money is on no, the brand is tarnished, but some day the idea seems like it will resurface, and when it does whoever shows some more evidence of real technology will be quickly funded.
- daveguy 10y agoBut was it a good idea? There seems to be serious questions as to whether you can collect just a drop of blood and get accurate test results in the presence of tissue and extracellular fluid.
- SapphireSun 10y agoI've seen a lot of people say that, and I believe them. This idea just occurred to me though... what if you use a gentle vacuum to pull more blood out of the pinprick? I get the impression that you need a lot more volume to even out the variations, but if you collected 5x more, maybe there are a few more tests you could do.
- madgar 10y agoThe entire point was to not draw much blood. Even trying to solve the problem by drawing more blood would be a tacit admission of failure and a huge signaling risk.
- SapphireSun 10y agoFor Theano sure, but maybe for someone else it could be worth a try. I think the draw was less how much blood needed to be drawn and more how invasive the needle is. You can always hide the blood from view if necessary.
- a_small_island 10y ago>"In addition to making frequent media and conference appearances, she hired Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris to film videos of herself and others for Theranos’s website." I had to look this up: https://www.theranos.com/news/videos https://www.theranos.com/news/videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZlOSdKjqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZlOSdKjqY
- joering2 10y agoGreat found! +1 He made her eyes looks like a weirdo on cocaine and steroids.... surprisingly it brought memories of this dude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m74KOFZYOWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m74KOFZYOWM
- cpeterso 10y agoLooks like Morris used his "Secret Weapon for Unsettling Interviews: The Interrotron": http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663105/errol-morriss-secret-weapon-for-unsettling-interviews-the-interrotron http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663105/errol-morriss-secret-wea...
- trgn 10y agothe Fog of War was great. What struck me the most was that the interviewer seemed to be shouting across the room. McNamara didn't seem all that bothered either. Also, none of those sycophantic reaction shots of the interviewer benignly nodding, or incredulously furrowing their brow. I wish more journalists would use this system (I didn't know it had a name, thanks for the link).
- zzleeper 10y agoWhy would she even approve that? She looks insane...
- w4 10y agoThat video is basically crazyeyes.mpeg. It's almost physically uncomfortable to watch - what was the director thinking here?
- blakeross 10y agoMy semi-annual plug for the parody television show I wrote about Theranos last year: http://www.pricks.com http://www.pricks.com
- w1ntermute 10y agoHave you tried to get involved in the Adam McKay/JLaw movie?
- neotek 10y agoI really would give anything to see this show become a reality. You're a fantastic writer, your stuff on Medium is superb. If there was a way to invest in a pilot I would hand over as much as I could.
- nkrisc 10y agoIt really grew on me as I read. Great work.
- mmmBacon 10y ago>We accept full responsibility for the issues at our laboratory in Newark, California, and have already worked to undertake comprehensive remedial actions,” including, it added, shutting down that lab, adding new medical experts and lab staff I wonder what kind of medical expert would risk their reputation to go work for Theranos at this point? From where I sit there's no amount they could pay me that would be worth risking my professional reputation.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoIf you could go in and discredit various methods, it seems like you would garner a higher reputation?
- chris11 10y agoI'm sure their employees have signed NDAs.
- joshdickson 10y agoMy favorite anecdote from this excellent piece, where Ms. Holmes is supposed to be presenting a slide deck of clinical results proving the effectiveness of Theranos' technology to employees, is re: NASA. > Ms. Holmes has told employees that she plans on rehearsing her AACC presentation with them several times before the conference. When asked by an employee if the June presentation was the first of these rehearsals, she said no. > Since most of the data from the new studies wasn’t in yet, the preliminary slide deck she showed focused instead on a timeline of the company’s 13-year history, according to the attendee. > As employees listened in silence, she showed slides about the several generations of blood-reading devices Theranos has developed and past partnerships it has had with pharmaceutical companies, the person said. > One slide featured the NASA logo, which struck some employees as odd because no relationship they knew of had developed following a demonstration Theranos had made of its device to representatives of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration several years ago. A spokesman for NASA said he didn’t know what relationship, if any, the agency has with Theranos.
- rasz_pl 10y agoThey did a presentation = there probably was letter of intend = cooperation, boom logo lands on the website. This is standard trick of scams promising product real soon
- danpalmer 10y agoEvery article about Theranos seems to end in criticism of Holmes, but if the apparent situation is true – that the technology just doesn't really work – it seems her actions are pretty much to be expected. Most of what she has done would be to buy more time to try and figure out the technology (which makes sense), and to try to save some face, which is understandable.
- chmaynard 10y agoTheranos needs to show the scientific community that blood oozing from an open wound (a finger prick), contaminated by tissues and surface bacteria, is clinically comparable to blood extracted directly from a vein. They also need to prove that analyzing a diluted, contaminated blood sample with the Siemens instrument produces an accurate result. Perhaps Theranos hasn't published any research on the scientific foundations of their technology because they have nothing of value to show us.
- madgar 10y agoThis is the dirty secret that nobody here wants to admit: the entire startup system that so many here benefit from incentivizes digging yourself deeper. Folks want to blame Elizabeth Holmes for taking seriously all the startup mantras. "Shoot for the moon" and "Fake it until you make it" and "Startups are about people, not ____" and "Use your resources". Sure, startups are supposed to "fail fast" too, but whenever a startup actually voluntarily returns money to investors early it's the talk of the town. Nobody ever expected that from a startup with as much capital as Theranos got.
- aurizon 10y agoHolmsey, learn this, it will come in handy - Do you want fries with that?
- hellomoto998 10y agoThis is rude.
- aurizon 10y agoRude, but accurate, she made errors of ignorance and omission, if not deliberation and they have come home to roost...
- yitchelle 10y agoSerious question - with so much bad press about the way their company is doing things (mostly unethical), why haven't their work force collapsed? I would imagine most of their engineers, scientist etc would be leaving the company every day.
- dragonwriter 10y agoBecause workers have bills to pay?
- taternuts 10y agoSure, but the real talent at the company surely wouldn't have much trouble finding work somewhere else, especially given the amount of stories out there saying that they've been kept in the dark the whole time. The question is why would these people stay on this sinking ship
- gedrap 10y agoIt's hard to say without at least having knowledge of the industry as it's naive to expect that it's the same job market as with the programmers. While it all looks ridiculous from the outside (and media makes it easy to see Theranos as a bunch of idiots), maybe some smart people inside think that they still can pull it off? That maybe the odds of success are large enough, even still low in absolute terms, to take the risk to hit the jackpot? Or maybe simply it's not that easy to find a new job in such a niche area.
- return0 10y agoOK, i get that the CEO was an inexperienced kid (at best), or a deluded megalomaniac-egomaniac person who couldn't even finish college , yet thought that by following the 10000 hour rule and wearing turtlenecks will turn her to the next Napoleon bonaparte (at worst). What about the other employees/investors/board members? Are they hiding, or prefer to kill the sacrificial lamb instead?
- rcarrigan87 10y agoI'm really curious about this as well. I find it hard to believe all the employees would be willing to help them cover anything up at this point. Maybe the extreme, cult-like nature of Theranos is going to be the next story to drop. Or maybe their tech will actually work. Who knows.
- SilasX 10y agoYeah, I wonder where someone would ever get the idea... - that an entire industry has been doing it wrong - that it can be fixed by a low-bureaucracy, Angel-funded startup - that once you have enough success you can just rewrite the laws that were slowing you down - that no one knows what they're doing anyway, major projects are 100% guesswork, and you should just "fake it till you make it" - that any skill is just a matter of 10,000 hours of practice - that you can outsmart an industry before even passing or placing out of sophomore level classes - that any self-doubt must be Impostor Syndrome, and so it's not worth your time to even check if that doubt has a factual basis Well, I mean, of course, besides the HN comment section.
- exit 10y agoso, people still willingly work at this company, still show up for this show 40 hours a week? can we stop and ask what the hell does that tell us about the nature of employment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOanjl2g_14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOanjl2g_14 "i was astonished by what they did there"
- forgottenpass 10y agocan we stop and ask what the hell does that tell us about the nature of employment? The labor force does not consist of perfectly-informed or perfectly-rational actors. The system is incentivized to keep it that way, and to make us think this isn't already an open-secret. We already know about the nature of employment. The interesting question are: what should change? And which mechanisms that should be used to facilitate that change?
- rdlecler1 10y agoThe bigger question is how much runway do they have left? It is going to be hard to go back to the market to raise another round.