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The whole Theranos disaster and partly also whats going on at Tesla are just good illustrations of the hubris in Silicon Valley. As soon as you leave the domain

The whole Theranos disaster and partly also whats going on at Tesla are just good illustrations of the hubris in Silicon Valley. As soon as you leave the domain of stuff that can be accomplished with more or less buggy software, you collide with a bunch of real world/physical problems that are much harder to solve and need a lot of experience and perseverance to get right. That attitude that the guys developing blood testing devices at Siemens & co for decades are just a bunch of idiots who never thought of reducing the size of the devices and/or the amount of blood it takes to perform the tests is pretty preposterous. Just like the car industry which has been at the forefront of process automation has never thought of using robots for dashboard assembly etc.!? Its not that they dont do it because they are stupid or lazy (which is the assumption of SV) but because the tried for many years and it just doesn't work well enough. Its really interesting, that SV VC seem to have forgotten that very basic question: why have the existing players not come up with something like that? Very often the answer is, they have and they tried and they figured out a long time ago, that it probably doesnt work well enough in the real world.

adrianN 8y ago
Space X seems to be doing pretty well competing against the old guard.
- biston7 8y ago
  You're comparing apples and oranges. Rocketry is a domain which until very recently was completely the province of governments. Lack of competition definitely causes problems with innovation. Also, I've read some articles that suggest SpaceX is unlikely to achieve the economies they tout. The car industry has essentially always been very competitive, with a number of innovative companies. Consider the rise of hybrid cars with Honda and Toyota leading the way. GM famously did a lot of the pioneering of modern EVs. Also, the point grandparent was making is that you see a similar pattern of deception from Tesla. Sure, maybe sometimes it works out. But not always. Another interesting question is whether deception is actually bad for human advancement in the long run. In fact, maybe the answer is no. I bet a lot of innovations came about because of founders essentially lying to investors to get a check and then ultimately finding a way.
  - tardo99 8y ago
    Completely reasonable comment downvoted by the Elon Musk fan brigade. C'mon folks.
icebraining 8y ago
What makes you assume that the SV assumption is that other companies are stupid or lazy? Siemens doesn't have to be a bunch of idiots to not pursue devices that test on smaller amounts of blood; they might simply not have an incentive to do so. If their business model is to sell devices to labs for $$$$, reducing the amount of blood is probably not a big selling point. It only becomes so if you're trying to bypass the lab and go more directly to the customer (as in Theranos with Walgreens). But why would Siemens do that, when it's a less profitable product that directly competes with the other? For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some competition.
- projektfu 8y ago
  In the veterinary market we use analyzers that require ~100uL blood, about two drops of an eyedropper. Device makers have machines that run the gamut from tiny and portable to room sized, and the main difference is throughput. My analyzer can run about 3 samples per hour. A big Siemens or Toshiba can be continuously loaded to run hundreds. The biggest risk from a medical standpoint of using a machine like Theranos wanted was using capillary blood. You really would need a lot of data to interpret the results like we have for venous blood.
- chopin 8y ago
  > For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some competition. Do you have a source for this? As far as I remember past discussions on HN about Theranos, testing on small samples is notoriously difficult. As an experimental physicist, this seems plausible to me: Say 5% error margin on your result is required. This leaves a lot more leeway for dimensional errors (of the sampling chamber) compared to a few µl. Not to speak of introducing external impurities (or those induced by the sampling as mentioned by the article). I am pretty sure Siemens has lots of incentive to err on the safe side. If we really like to disrupt this industry, it would be nicer to be able to make these tests in-vivo, in my opinion.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

adrianN 8y ago

Space X seems to be doing pretty well competing against the old guard.

biston7 8y ago
You're comparing apples and oranges. Rocketry is a domain which until very recently was completely the province of governments. Lack of competition definitely causes problems with innovation. Also, I've read some articles that suggest SpaceX is unlikely to achieve the economies they tout. The car industry has essentially always been very competitive, with a number of innovative companies. Consider the rise of hybrid cars with Honda and Toyota leading the way. GM famously did a lot of the pioneering of modern EVs. Also, the point grandparent was making is that you see a similar pattern of deception from Tesla. Sure, maybe sometimes it works out. But not always. Another interesting question is whether deception is actually bad for human advancement in the long run. In fact, maybe the answer is no. I bet a lot of innovations came about because of founders essentially lying to investors to get a check and then ultimately finding a way.
- tardo99 8y ago
  Completely reasonable comment downvoted by the Elon Musk fan brigade. C'mon folks.

icebraining 8y ago

What makes you assume that the SV assumption is that other companies are stupid or lazy? Siemens doesn't have to be a bunch of idiots to not pursue devices that test on smaller amounts of blood; they might simply not have an incentive to do so. If their business model is to sell devices to labs for $$$$, reducing the amount of blood is probably not a big selling point. It only becomes so if you're trying to bypass the lab and go more directly to the customer (as in Theranos with Walgreens). But why would Siemens do that, when it's a less profitable product that directly competes with the other? For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some competition.

projektfu 8y ago
In the veterinary market we use analyzers that require ~100uL blood, about two drops of an eyedropper. Device makers have machines that run the gamut from tiny and portable to room sized, and the main difference is throughput. My analyzer can run about 3 samples per hour. A big Siemens or Toshiba can be continuously loaded to run hundreds. The biggest risk from a medical standpoint of using a machine like Theranos wanted was using capillary blood. You really would need a lot of data to interpret the results like we have for venous blood.
chopin 8y ago
> For all we know, Siemens already has a smaller, cheaper device that uses only a drop of blood, yet no reason to sell it until they get some competition. Do you have a source for this? As far as I remember past discussions on HN about Theranos, testing on small samples is notoriously difficult. As an experimental physicist, this seems plausible to me: Say 5% error margin on your result is required. This leaves a lot more leeway for dimensional errors (of the sampling chamber) compared to a few µl. Not to speak of introducing external impurities (or those induced by the sampling as mentioned by the article). I am pretty sure Siemens has lots of incentive to err on the safe side. If we really like to disrupt this industry, it would be nicer to be able to make these tests in-vivo, in my opinion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]