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This interview with John Carreyrou [1], the Wall Street Journal journalist who is largely responsible for exposing Theranos, goes into a lot of detail. It's lon

This interview with John Carreyrou [1], the Wall Street Journal journalist who is largely responsible for exposing Theranos, goes into a lot of detail. It's long, so if you want a shorter answer, jump to the question "What technology did Theranos actually develop?": Basically there were three iterations of the technology. The first one used microfluidics, which are basically the repurposing of the micro-fabrication techniques that the computer chip industry pioneered to move tiny volumes of liquid. Theranos tried to work on that for several years before Holmes lost patience in late fall 2007 and abandoned it. At that point she pivoted to what was essentially a converted glue-dispensing robot. One of the engineers ordered a glue-dispensing robot from a company called Fisnar in New Jersey, studied its components and rebuilt a smaller version of it. It was a robotic arm on a gantry with three degrees of motion and a pipette stuck to its end, and it replicated what the scientist does at the bench. That ended up being called the Edison and it could do only one class of test, known as immunoassays. It was also error-prone. The third iteration of the technology was the miniLab, which Holmes wanted to be able to do more than just immunoassays. The miniLab didn’t invent any new techniques to test blood with. It miniaturized existing laboratory instruments and packed them into one box. By the time Theranos went live with its tests, the miniLab was a malfunctioning prototype. The interview also explains how Holmes was able to attract so many influential people on her board. The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing non-scientists that their science worked. [1] http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of-the-silicon-valley-bubble http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-...

api 8y ago
> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing ... Considering this and the lack of substance behind her claims, I would personally bet money that she is a clinical psychopath. The most disturbing thing I have ever observed about human beings is our tendency to follow psychopaths. Psychopaths seem to have this gravity around them and people just fall into line. I've observed some spectacular examples. A psychopath can say the most questionable or even absurd things and people will just believe, whereas people will be skeptical of even very sane things that come out of the mouths of non-psychopaths. It's as if clinical psychopaths have some special instinctive ability to generate body language, vocal cues, and linguistic patterns that manipulate others very effectively. I am not claiming that everyone with a "reality distortion field" must be a psychopath, but I've definitely observed a positive correlation.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I remember reading that a lot of CEOs and generally people in leadership positions have psychopathic traits. This probably is an asset if it's balanced by other traits.
  - dmfdmf 8y ago
    I'd take those articles with a huge grain of salt. How could you distinguish a CEO with the courage to make an unpopular choice (e.g. layoff 1/3 of the workforce to save the company) -vs- a psychopath who does it to inflict suffering on others or to just establish dominance? How do you even measure psychopathic traits without defining exactly what "psychopathy" means and a rational ethic by which to judge the non-psychopaths (i.e. the "control group" or standard of normal)? Moreover, motive is not irrelevant to the question and not only is it not measurable by researchers, most people don't even know their own subconscious motives. I'd bet if you dug into the research what you'd find is the research really shows that psychologists who study such things do not have the character/psychology of those who become CEOs, not that they are psychopaths.
    - sjg007 8y ago
      Huh? You just give the ceos a psychopath exam.
      - dmfdmf 8y ago
        No. I reject the methodology of the psychologists who do these types of studies.
        sjg007 8y ago
        Why?
        dmfdmf 8y ago
        Because you can't define pathology (deviation from a norm) without defining the norm. Modern psychologists dodge this question and implicitly assume various generally accepted moral standards and tenents (a form of circular reasoning) by which they condemn those who don't follow it. It is not science and to make it a science the psychologists should be seeking a rational basis to define ethics. Nobody has done this and until they do psychology will remain a pre-science like alchemy.
weiming 8y ago
I am assuming they had some of the best people in the field working on these. Makes me wonder how much the employees were aware of the company's situation, and the infeasibility of some of these goals.
- icantdrive55 8y ago
  I have found that most people go along with the herd when it comes to money, and career. Those that claim, "Not me!", are usually the last to raise their hand. I have seen so many people con other people legally, and 1 out of a 100-1000 will even bring up the immoral/unethical behavior. I walked out of Chiropractic School in the ninties after realizing it's a scam. The Subluxation is exceptionally rare. I knew, along with my classmates that it was all a big scam, but we were invested. A New Yorker, and myself were the only ones raising our hands when the instructor would say something rediculious like, "Chiropractic has over 17 different upper cervicsl techniques, and they all work equally well." Yea--Placbo Effect was a bad word. In all honesty, it took a nervous breakdown to completely see the light. I knew all along it was a sham, but figured I would be different Chiropractor. I would use the non-force techniques on patients, and refer if anyone didn't respond to my harmless placebo treatments. In the end, I just walked, but took away something about human nature. Career, and money will cause most of you to look the other way.
- kwindla 8y ago
  Very aware, but information was strictly compartmentalized inside the company so individual employees had to figure out that things were badly wrong in different ways, depending on what their roles were and when in the lifecycle of the company they were there. Overall, though, the employee turnover was insane. As someone who has spent a lot of time around startups, the amount of employee turnover was one of the craziest -- indicative in hindsight -- things in John Carreyrou's extremely well-reported book, "Bad Blood." Most startup boards would have looked at that level of employee turnover and realized that there was something much worse going on than a young founder without much management experience doing a poor job at hiring and retention. But the board apparently didn't get very much information about the actual operation of company, didn't push for more, and didn't question or dig into what they did get.
grouseway 8y ago
I wonder if medman77 was talking abut the glue dispenser here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808
icelancer 8y ago
>> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing non-scientists that their science worked. This confuses a lot of people (not saying you are one of them), but this is really common in intelligent non-experts. People vastly overestimate how intelligent they are when they place value on their intelligence; in other words, they like thinking they are smart. When they prize their own intelligence, they have false confidence about areas they have zero expertise in, purely because they feel they can figure it out. So all it takes is someone with sociopathic tendencies and who has extreme confidence with a good CV, and bam, they're willing to go to the mat for that person. Holmes is one example but certainly not the only one.
- gwicks56 8y ago
  That's why, when you read the memoirs of conmen, they always say educated, intelligent people are the easiest to rip off.
  - grigjd3 8y ago
    Funny, the PhD taught me to keep what I say fairly limited. On the other hand, I find generalists will say all kinds of crap that "sounds true" but they have at best a weak theory and a couple of anecdotes.
    - learc83 8y ago
      You seem to be making an argument for a weak theory with a couple of anecdotes.
      - xcccccc 8y ago
        I think by "generalists" he means "people who can talk seemingly brilliantly about a wide range of issues" rather than non-PhDs. I would agree with his statement then. I have never met a brilliant talker who could actually do anything. Many top mathematicians appear clumsy in presentations to the uneducated listener. It is a great tragedy that fluent talking (these days aided by teleprompter) passes for intelligence.
brianpan 8y ago
> Jobs-like "reality distortion field" There's salesmanship and then there's lying. It might feel like a thin line but I think it's important not to conflate the two. Criminal behavior is not just "reality distortion".
- basicplus2 8y ago
  I take the view that Ms Holmes deliberately used her "reality distortion field" to hide her deliberate criminal behaviour.
GW150914 8y ago
It probably helped that her mother was a congressional staffer and her father was a USAID exec.
- kwindla 8y ago
  According to the John Carreyrou book, not so much her parents, but an early and enthusiastic sponsorship from an influential Stanford professor, combined with a truly outlier ability to network with and impress powerful people. She accumulated an amazing amount of social proof, which she used to stockpile more social proof, ad infinitum.
  - delbel 8y ago
    Being extremely charming and likable is a giveaway for a psychopath.
  - mhneu 8y ago
    Didn’t Carryrou’s WSJ stories say that her parents’ govt connections pulled in Schultz and got her connected to the military? I remember his reporting implying that a lot of the money Theranos raised seemed like it came in expecting military applications and thus military contracts. Which the military board (that her parents connected her with initially) would have helped with.
    - kwindla 8y ago
      I believe that Carreyrou's book says Holmes built a relationship with George Shultz, then Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn, through Stanford's Hoover Institution. They were all fellows at Hoover. I'm looking at page 181 in the hardcover edition. The book doesn't mention any family connections to Shultz. The military interest originally came from James Mattis, then head of US Central Command. The book says that Holmes met him "at the Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco," but doesn't say more about that first meeting.
mhneu 8y ago
There’s one other REALLY important reason why Holmes was able to raise money. Remember venture firms with blood test knowledge like Google V were turning her down. Holmes was close family friends with George Schultz, and that allowed her to do two things. First, get a bunch of military and government guys on the board. And second, sell to the military. That was Theranos’ real ace in the hole. Holmes knew top military brass and they were going to give her military contracts to test soldiers’ blood. We don’t know what she was telling investors, exactly, but that seems like a real source of revenue investors would care about. Carreyrou describes how it was a mid level DoD employee that screwed up the plan - he looked at the data and scuttled the contract even though the generals wanted to award it to Theranos. Hat tip to hard working, honest govt employees. Board and Schultz details: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2018/04/14/the-theranos-con/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefr...
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  That mid level DoD employee should get a bonus, a promotion, and a medal.
  - SilverSlash 8y ago
    How about Tyler Shultz? The main whistleblower and grandson of George Shultz. He was working at Theranos and realized they were a giant fraud. He lost his job, was harassed by lawyers, he and his parents almost had to sell their house to pay legal fees, his grandfather wouldn't speak to him anymore, etc.
    - recharged93 8y ago
      Basically the gov't employee, son, and likely others we don't know about lost their jobs and even blacklisted. I say 90% of VC back companies are blowing smoke to the endpoint investor, public and consumer. 100% of those companies have miracle products that scale forever and work... In 1 specific ise case: the demo booth. They oversell. I see 2 out of 10 startups bring a viable product to the global 2000 table. Spacex: we can go to Mars, but haven't even launched a Mars rocket. Google: AI is here, and the product? Waymo, logs millions of miles, is just sunny conditions? The common strategy: lie(aka promise), sell the future, hopefully you get the solution and hit time to market. Holmes was following the same playbook, BUT just gave up, and that's got her investors and comsumers furious. If she apologized, AND stuck with it, investors would still back her, and the public flac would have subsided....VCs were sold on her future. On the opposite end, aside from real mistakes is a company like Apple: they sell the future and deliver.
briandear 8y ago
Except, unlike Jobs, she couldn’t actually execute. The Jobs distortion field wasn’t a parlor trick, he was able to actually create the reality. Holmes was unlike Jobs in every way other than in her own mind. Look at all of the products that came from Jobs’s distortion field. Look at the wasteland of false promises resulting from Theranos. She was selling lemonade and calling it vodka.
- xcccccc 8y ago
  Jobs got other people to create for him while taking the credit, again using his distortion field.

api 8y ago

> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing ... Considering this and the lack of substance behind her claims, I would personally bet money that she is a clinical psychopath. The most disturbing thing I have ever observed about human beings is our tendency to follow psychopaths. Psychopaths seem to have this gravity around them and people just fall into line. I've observed some spectacular examples. A psychopath can say the most questionable or even absurd things and people will just believe, whereas people will be skeptical of even very sane things that come out of the mouths of non-psychopaths. It's as if clinical psychopaths have some special instinctive ability to generate body language, vocal cues, and linguistic patterns that manipulate others very effectively. I am not claiming that everyone with a "reality distortion field" must be a psychopath, but I've definitely observed a positive correlation.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I remember reading that a lot of CEOs and generally people in leadership positions have psychopathic traits. This probably is an asset if it's balanced by other traits.
- dmfdmf 8y ago
  I'd take those articles with a huge grain of salt. How could you distinguish a CEO with the courage to make an unpopular choice (e.g. layoff 1/3 of the workforce to save the company) -vs- a psychopath who does it to inflict suffering on others or to just establish dominance? How do you even measure psychopathic traits without defining exactly what "psychopathy" means and a rational ethic by which to judge the non-psychopaths (i.e. the "control group" or standard of normal)? Moreover, motive is not irrelevant to the question and not only is it not measurable by researchers, most people don't even know their own subconscious motives. I'd bet if you dug into the research what you'd find is the research really shows that psychologists who study such things do not have the character/psychology of those who become CEOs, not that they are psychopaths.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Huh? You just give the ceos a psychopath exam.
    - dmfdmf 8y ago
      No. I reject the methodology of the psychologists who do these types of studies.
      - sjg007 8y ago
        Why?
        dmfdmf 8y ago
        Because you can't define pathology (deviation from a norm) without defining the norm. Modern psychologists dodge this question and implicitly assume various generally accepted moral standards and tenents (a form of circular reasoning) by which they condemn those who don't follow it. It is not science and to make it a science the psychologists should be seeking a rational basis to define ethics. Nobody has done this and until they do psychology will remain a pre-science like alchemy.

weiming 8y ago

I am assuming they had some of the best people in the field working on these. Makes me wonder how much the employees were aware of the company's situation, and the infeasibility of some of these goals.

icantdrive55 8y ago
I have found that most people go along with the herd when it comes to money, and career. Those that claim, "Not me!", are usually the last to raise their hand. I have seen so many people con other people legally, and 1 out of a 100-1000 will even bring up the immoral/unethical behavior. I walked out of Chiropractic School in the ninties after realizing it's a scam. The Subluxation is exceptionally rare. I knew, along with my classmates that it was all a big scam, but we were invested. A New Yorker, and myself were the only ones raising our hands when the instructor would say something rediculious like, "Chiropractic has over 17 different upper cervicsl techniques, and they all work equally well." Yea--Placbo Effect was a bad word. In all honesty, it took a nervous breakdown to completely see the light. I knew all along it was a sham, but figured I would be different Chiropractor. I would use the non-force techniques on patients, and refer if anyone didn't respond to my harmless placebo treatments. In the end, I just walked, but took away something about human nature. Career, and money will cause most of you to look the other way.
kwindla 8y ago
Very aware, but information was strictly compartmentalized inside the company so individual employees had to figure out that things were badly wrong in different ways, depending on what their roles were and when in the lifecycle of the company they were there. Overall, though, the employee turnover was insane. As someone who has spent a lot of time around startups, the amount of employee turnover was one of the craziest -- indicative in hindsight -- things in John Carreyrou's extremely well-reported book, "Bad Blood." Most startup boards would have looked at that level of employee turnover and realized that there was something much worse going on than a young founder without much management experience doing a poor job at hiring and retention. But the board apparently didn't get very much information about the actual operation of company, didn't push for more, and didn't question or dig into what they did get.

grouseway 8y ago

I wonder if medman77 was talking abut the glue dispenser here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349808

icelancer 8y ago

>> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing non-scientists that their science worked. This confuses a lot of people (not saying you are one of them), but this is really common in intelligent non-experts. People vastly overestimate how intelligent they are when they place value on their intelligence; in other words, they like thinking they are smart. When they prize their own intelligence, they have false confidence about areas they have zero expertise in, purely because they feel they can figure it out. So all it takes is someone with sociopathic tendencies and who has extreme confidence with a good CV, and bam, they're willing to go to the mat for that person. Holmes is one example but certainly not the only one.

gwicks56 8y ago
That's why, when you read the memoirs of conmen, they always say educated, intelligent people are the easiest to rip off.
- grigjd3 8y ago
  Funny, the PhD taught me to keep what I say fairly limited. On the other hand, I find generalists will say all kinds of crap that "sounds true" but they have at best a weak theory and a couple of anecdotes.
  - learc83 8y ago
    You seem to be making an argument for a weak theory with a couple of anecdotes.
    - xcccccc 8y ago
      I think by "generalists" he means "people who can talk seemingly brilliantly about a wide range of issues" rather than non-PhDs. I would agree with his statement then. I have never met a brilliant talker who could actually do anything. Many top mathematicians appear clumsy in presentations to the uneducated listener. It is a great tragedy that fluent talking (these days aided by teleprompter) passes for intelligence.

brianpan 8y ago

> Jobs-like "reality distortion field" There's salesmanship and then there's lying. It might feel like a thin line but I think it's important not to conflate the two. Criminal behavior is not just "reality distortion".

basicplus2 8y ago
I take the view that Ms Holmes deliberately used her "reality distortion field" to hide her deliberate criminal behaviour.

GW150914 8y ago

It probably helped that her mother was a congressional staffer and her father was a USAID exec.

kwindla 8y ago
According to the John Carreyrou book, not so much her parents, but an early and enthusiastic sponsorship from an influential Stanford professor, combined with a truly outlier ability to network with and impress powerful people. She accumulated an amazing amount of social proof, which she used to stockpile more social proof, ad infinitum.
- delbel 8y ago
  Being extremely charming and likable is a giveaway for a psychopath.
- mhneu 8y ago
  Didn’t Carryrou’s WSJ stories say that her parents’ govt connections pulled in Schultz and got her connected to the military? I remember his reporting implying that a lot of the money Theranos raised seemed like it came in expecting military applications and thus military contracts. Which the military board (that her parents connected her with initially) would have helped with.
  - kwindla 8y ago
    I believe that Carreyrou's book says Holmes built a relationship with George Shultz, then Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn, through Stanford's Hoover Institution. They were all fellows at Hoover. I'm looking at page 181 in the hardcover edition. The book doesn't mention any family connections to Shultz. The military interest originally came from James Mattis, then head of US Central Command. The book says that Holmes met him "at the Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco," but doesn't say more about that first meeting.

mhneu 8y ago

There’s one other REALLY important reason why Holmes was able to raise money. Remember venture firms with blood test knowledge like Google V were turning her down. Holmes was close family friends with George Schultz, and that allowed her to do two things. First, get a bunch of military and government guys on the board. And second, sell to the military. That was Theranos’ real ace in the hole. Holmes knew top military brass and they were going to give her military contracts to test soldiers’ blood. We don’t know what she was telling investors, exactly, but that seems like a real source of revenue investors would care about. Carreyrou describes how it was a mid level DoD employee that screwed up the plan - he looked at the data and scuttled the contract even though the generals wanted to award it to Theranos. Hat tip to hard working, honest govt employees. Board and Schultz details: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2018/04/14/the-theranos-con/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefr...

emiliobumachar 8y ago
That mid level DoD employee should get a bonus, a promotion, and a medal.
- SilverSlash 8y ago
  How about Tyler Shultz? The main whistleblower and grandson of George Shultz. He was working at Theranos and realized they were a giant fraud. He lost his job, was harassed by lawyers, he and his parents almost had to sell their house to pay legal fees, his grandfather wouldn't speak to him anymore, etc.
  - recharged93 8y ago
    Basically the gov't employee, son, and likely others we don't know about lost their jobs and even blacklisted. I say 90% of VC back companies are blowing smoke to the endpoint investor, public and consumer. 100% of those companies have miracle products that scale forever and work... In 1 specific ise case: the demo booth. They oversell. I see 2 out of 10 startups bring a viable product to the global 2000 table. Spacex: we can go to Mars, but haven't even launched a Mars rocket. Google: AI is here, and the product? Waymo, logs millions of miles, is just sunny conditions? The common strategy: lie(aka promise), sell the future, hopefully you get the solution and hit time to market. Holmes was following the same playbook, BUT just gave up, and that's got her investors and comsumers furious. If she apologized, AND stuck with it, investors would still back her, and the public flac would have subsided....VCs were sold on her future. On the opposite end, aside from real mistakes is a company like Apple: they sell the future and deliver.

briandear 8y ago

Except, unlike Jobs, she couldn’t actually execute. The Jobs distortion field wasn’t a parlor trick, he was able to actually create the reality. Holmes was unlike Jobs in every way other than in her own mind. Look at all of the products that came from Jobs’s distortion field. Look at the wasteland of false promises resulting from Theranos. She was selling lemonade and calling it vodka.

xcccccc 8y ago
Jobs got other people to create for him while taking the credit, again using his distortion field.