11 ms·

Alex Gibney on the Fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

83 points by danso 8y ago

AndrewBissell 8y ago
It's really shameful that Tim Draper continues to defend Elizabeth Holmes even after all the details about her harassment of ex-employees and whistleblowers have come out.
- skwb 8y ago
  Considering this is the same Tim Draper that wanted to separate California into 6 states that would effectively concentrate silicon valley wealth while leaving counties to the eastern states some of the poorest in the nation just to weaken the state's democratic position, I feel happy he lost his money in this company [0]. [0]. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-states_n_4890982.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-state...
clra 8y ago
> The Oscar-winning director presents a sympathetic portrait of the Silicon Valley CEO who fooled the world into believing she had built a better blood test I really don't know how to feel how to feel about that one. The final jury is out until we get to see the new series of course, but I hope he didn't portray her as too sympathetic. I recently finished Carreyrou’s book and found it legitimately disturbing. Holmes and Balwani didn't just lie and cover up bad results, but actively crucified any of their employees who dared question what they were doing in a way that's hard to interpret as anything except sinister malice. This might be best exemplified by Tyler Shultz, who ended up spending $400k in legal fees defending himself from Holmes and her lawyers [1]. Carreyrou was harassed by their legal team to suppress the stories that eventually led to Theranos' exposure, and you can't help but think throughout the book that the only way he could've done what he did was having the counter-legal team of the WSJ available, and deep pockets to fund it. Throughout the reveal process, anyone who was thought to be possibly leaking information was threatened with recriminatory lawsuits, and in America's shining light of a legal system any kind of company-on-individual action is a recipe for misery and bankruptcy. Holmes is one of the least sympathetic people I can imagine, and it'd be unfortunate (and a disservice to any of the people whose life she either destroyed [2] or tried to destroy) if Gibney improperly represented that through some kind of misguided artistic notion, especially given that there's a non-zero chance that something as high profile as an HBO documentary could indirectly influence the results of the upcoming criminal trial. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/the-personal-bloodbath-behind-theranos-rise-and-fall/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/the-personal-bloodba... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)#Death
- sizzzzlerz 8y ago
  She deserves no sympathy what so ever. Much like cyclist, Lance Armstrong, she perpetrated out-right fraud on her investors, employees, and customers and threatened to ruin them financially and legally if they exposed her. The kicker here, however, is that the fraudulent product she was marketing had the potential of seriously impacting the life and health of those who used her product. Trusting the results could result in actually missing a diagnosis of serious issues, resulting in delayed treatment, bad health, and early death or costing the patient money for treatment of a condition they didn't actually have. Her motives may have been pure early on but once it became apparent that her product simply didn't work, any action taken beyond closing up shop or changing direction and investing in a new approach was unforgivable. In the sentencing to come, following the trial, I hope the judge throws the book at her with a substantial prison sentence and the loss of any ill-gotten gains.
  - Benjammer 8y ago
    It really does have a Lance Armstrong vibe, where, sure, the thing itself was pretty bad, but the defensive actions surrounding the core thing were ten times worse. Destroying many people's lives, and livelihoods, at the slightest hint of a challenge. Theranos, though, does have the added negative attribute that the product was a medical device and not just an individual's professional athletics career.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Armstrong's actions had implications way outside of his individual career.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Still nowhere near as important as a medical device with false promises.
        jacquesm 8y ago
hhs 8y ago
"I think the connection between scientology and Elizabeth Holmes is the “prison of belief”. Look at what happens to [Theranos board member] George Shultz – the grandfather of [eventual whistleblower] Tyler Shultz; the noted Secretary of State. Even when his grandson comes to him and says, “You know Grandpa, there’s rampant fraud at Theranos”, he can’t undo or retract or unwind the belief that he has. He’s in a prison of belief of Elizabeth Holmes. He’s committed to her, and for him to say, “Oh wow, that’s terrible”, would mean that he has to go back to the beginning and admit that he was duped and fooled." In the social sciences, they call this 'belief perseverance'. To take this to an extreme, think of how many generations of people were convinced of geocentrism.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  I think that captured the key essence of a lot of the fraud that goes on. Essentially you have people who consider themselves to be reasonably critical thinkers, and the dissonance of how wrong they were is so great that the external information is rejected. Being aware of this effect is critical for people who want to be active listeners. You have to accept the possibility that the information you are hearing that goes against everything you believe, might be true, and then work to understand whether or not you can test the two disjoint beliefs for validity. Were I in the position George found himself in, I would start by asking deeper questions about how the process works, how it fails, and how one can test that it is working as expected. If people get evasive it lends credence to the dissonant information, if they are forthcoming and have answers to the questions, it tends to support the core belief. "Trust but verify" is often used in this sort of context. Always listen for meta-data and probe it when it throws up red flags. When someone gets angry in response to what seems like a simple question, follow that anger to see where it originates.
  - hhs 8y ago
    Good points, these are useful ways to confront it. Sometimes, I also think of Andy Grove's motto, "only the paranoid survive", which helps to check and challenge ideas.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
rdtsc 8y ago
> But I think that the more important thing about Elizabeth to me is that she did have a mission – a noble mission Did she? The proof offered was that she didn't pay herself as much money as Madoff did, so consequently her mission must have been noble. People do things not just for money, especially if they are already well of. They want validation, power, fame, etc. > Fake it ‘til you make it is something that’s imbued in the DNA of a lot of Silicon Valley companies. Ok, well Google and FB are shady and play fast and loose with people's data. Why shouldn't Holmes play fast and loose with people's blood tests. Let's not judge her too much. > Elizabeth exists on a spectrum of people who over-promise and sometimes way under-deliver and sometimes commit fraud. The spectrum also extends to how much she was praised and touted as a great young entrepreneur. She wasn't just quietly running a scam, but basking in the lime-light dancing to "U Can't Touch This" (figuratively and literally https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/tech/the-inventor-theranos-documentary/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/tech/the-inventor-theranos-do...). > Because if she’s just the bad apple – you know that’s what they said about the people at Abu Ghraib. Right, she is just like the people tortured at Abu Ghraib. Poor thing, how will she ever recover. There is element here I think where the directory himself wants to stir controversy and one way to do it is to present her in a rather sympathetic way. Otherwise not sure how to interpret the "Abu Ghraib" and fraud is just "a spectrum" comments. It might pay off I suppose. But it's a bit too transparent.
- jonny_eh 8y ago
  > Right, she is just like the people tortured at Abu Ghraib. Poor thing, how will she ever recover. I think he meant that she's like the torturers at Abu Ghraib. She may be guilty, but so is the system around her. During that scandal, some people argued that the American war on terror wasn't corrupt, there were just a few bad apples that took it too far.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    Ah, you'r right. But it still doesn't work to bring that Abu Ghraib into this at all. The story then becomes that she was just part of a broken system and isn't responsible?
hjk05 8y ago
> You know, if you’re pursuing a noble goal, it’s OK to fake it ‘til you make it. This seems completely be starkly in contrast with reality. She did not persue a noble goal and secondarily achieve power and wealth. If that was the case she would never had sent out bogus resulst for patients of hunted innoscent employees for presenting the truth. All the facts on the table tell a tale of a person who wanted money, power and influence, and sat with a 2-7 off suit and decided to bluff on the off-chance that everyone else would fold. It’s sad that Alex Gibney has decided to spin a story he wants to tell around a reality that doesn’t support it.
- gabbygab 8y ago
  I wonder if Holmes was able to charm and dupe this director like she did so many other people. I read that sociopaths could be exceptionally manipulative and conniving. The only goal of Holmes was to make money. Just like everyone else. The "noble goal" is just BS PR she concocted for herself to more easily influence and trick investors. Like her Steve Jobs' turtleneck and her fake "manly" voice. Almost everything about her was fake and her only goal was cold hard cash. But I guess it makes for a better story if we turn her into a fallen saint who failed to achieve her "noble goal".
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Bad Blood makes it pretty clear that "becoming a billionaire" was her number one priority.
robertAngst 8y ago
This is going to be Tesla and Elon, but he won't be nearly as bad because he has government contracts with SpaceX. To be fair 60B Mkt Cap is irresponsibly high on the part of investors. The same could be said about this situation.
- projectramo 8y ago
  Wait, you're telling me the Tesla doesn't drive??!!! They've fooled so many people!
  - AndrewBissell 8y ago
    Charles Ponzi : Ivar Krueger :: Elizabeth Holmes : Elon Musk
samfisher83 8y ago
Why is she not in jail. The fyre guy is in jail and she messed with patients lives. I think its much worse that what he did.
- AndrewBissell 8y ago
  Her criminal trial hasn't started yet and she's out on bail. The SEC slapped her with a 10-year D&O ban which, short of a lifetime ban, is their most severe civil penalty.
- twblalock 8y ago
  She is going on trial and there is a good chance she will be jailed when it is over.
- draw_down 8y ago
  She has better friends ;)
- thoman23 8y ago
  She and Balwani are both facing 20 years in federal prison.
foolsgold 8y ago
The first time I saw a picture of Elizabeth Holmes I thought she was bat shit crazy and I thought what she was doing was a scam, solely based on how she looked.
- Intermernet 8y ago
  That's generally a very inaccurate way to judge people, and even if it was correct, will mostly lead to prejudice and bad judgement in the future. Don't judge a book by it's cover, even if you were right once. I can't believe that requires stating.
  - Udik 8y ago
    > Don't judge a book by it's cover Why not? Covers are chosen to appeal the type of audience that is more likely to enjoy that type of book. It's actually very easy to judge a book by its cover and in some way you're supposed to. People are not much different: while of course it's possible to misjudge people based on how they appear, the look they choose, deliberately and consistently, certainly tells something about them.
- creddit 8y ago
  This is the single dumbest thing I've ever read on Hacker News.
  - paulcole 8y ago
    A high bar to clear indeed.
chrisa 8y ago
Does anyone know if it’s possible to see the actual deposition tapes somewhere? Just curious
- robterrell 8y ago
  I believe the podcast "The Dropout" plays some of them.
thrax 8y ago
Holmes only fault was that her "reality distortion field" wasn't strong enough. There are 100s of theranoses in sv/SF that won't see the light of day, thus escaping the kind of scrutiny theranos had. All this soul searching is bankrupt at it's core. She was just playing the role that SV sells to any entrepreneur it encounters. "Move fast, break things, if the world doesn't match your expectation then change the world." It's bullshit all the way down. Enjoy your iPhones, Ubers, taskrabbits, doordashes and Amazon's that are all predicated on exploiting legal loopholes and turning a profit until they get big enough that politicians overlook or change laws to accommodate them for a piece of the pie.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Enjoy your iPhones, Ubers, taskrabbits, doordashes and Amazon's that are all predicated on exploiting legal loopholes and turning a profit until they get big enough that politicians overlook or change laws to accommodate them for a piece of the pie. Don't know about the others, but my iPhone was sold to me as tech that worked well, from version 1, and that I wanted (wouldn't go as far as to say needed). So, there's that. Not sure what the link to Theranos is.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  This is unmitigated bullshit. You can make reasoned arguments for and against the business models of the companies you've mentioned, but to throw them all in the same bucket of "rampant fraud and malice" is just false equivalency of the highest degree.
georgewsinger 8y ago
Contrarian question: is Elizabeth Holmes really as bad as consensus makes her out to be? I read Bad Blood when it came out. Here are some questions I had: 1. Base rate insensitivity. Carreyrou argues that Theranos prototype(s) were abundant in Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Yet, as far as I recall, it was never specified what the acceptable error rate is for a blood testing machine, and precisely how deviant Theranos' machines were. If we found out, for example, that an acceptable Type 1 error rate for a blood machine was 1%, and that Theranos' machines were yielding 3% Type 1 errors, I wouldn't be as offended had they been yielding 20% error rates. So exactly how error prone were Theranos machines compared to base rate? It was never specified. This makes it really hard to quantify the level of harm they were (or might have) imposed on society. 2. Theranos might have had a legitimate path to product. No one seems to dispute that Theranos had actual prototypes that functioned to some degree. The issue is that they functioned (i) with unsuitably high error rates (see above) and that (ii) Theranos' machines were on their own only able to test for certain things. But it's still unclear to me if they had an actual path to finishing their machines to spec. (The book concentrated on Holmes' misleading people on how much progress they had made, but this is distinct from whether or not Theranos had a secret plan to finish things). For sake of argument suppose Theranos needed another 3 years to finish their machines to spec. If Holmes had pulled it off, we might had called her a hero (at least I might have). So did Holmes have a path? It's unclear reading the book, from what I recall. Of course, the history of SV is full of people pushing the edges. This leads us to point 3: 3. Carreyrou's anecdotes of harm were weak. Carreyrou was unable to find compelling cases of people being severely harmed by Theranos machines, or so one could argue. Here "severe harm" to me means: failure to identify life threatening diseases (Type 2) causing, i.e., death. If I recall Carreyrou did find one case of Theranos machines misdiagnosing severe diseases (Type 1 error causing someone thousands of dollars of further blood tests + serious anxiety along the way). Of course, that's not a good thing. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. But only one case? (Keep in mind that normal blood tests already can give people Type 1 errors [causing anxiety, further medical expenses, etc]; see point 1). And compare this harm to the amount of good Theranos would had been able to add to society had they succeeded in their engineering efforts (assuming they did have a path to victory). 4. Holmes had skin in the game. If I recall, Holmes fought tooth and nail to maximize her equity in Theranos, and when the (alleged) house of cards came down, she had less than $1M in net worth. This strikes me as consistent behavior with someone who genuinely believed in her plan (and hence the long-term value of Theranos). At worst Holmes was totally delusional, but it seems less likely to me that she was a legitimate con artist. I just want to clarify: it's been a while since I've read Bad Blood (and actually, I quite enjoyed the book). And I don't condone misleading investors, fraudulent behavior, etc. I'm sure I'm missing some serious things Theranos did that could have been criminal. But Carreyrou (himself not an innovator) seemed at times to do a poor job considering the alternate viewpoint sincerely: that Holmes was just pushing the edges, and that it was at the end of the day worth it. His book no doubt set the dominoes in motion for Theranos to implode. So I felt compelled to explore this alternative viewpoint and to get it in writing. Cheers.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Folks that are commenting here that "well Big Company XYZ does some shady stuff how is that any different" honestly make me very sad. If you've read Bad Blood and can honestly say that the behavior of Google, Tesla, et al reaches anywhere close to the level of deceit, malice and downright sociopathy exhibited by Holmes and Balwani, I question your moral compass.
rofo1 8y ago
Anything less than the following is just displaying lack of morality in our whole society: Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Balwani are absolute psychopaths without remorse or conscience. We should not give them this much attention. I can't help but feel that we are doing something wrong by talking and writing about them, as if they are something special. They should be in jail, and the facts of the case should be made public, and that's it - end of story. If we portray them in any other way, we are just doing disservice to everyone. For further reading, Carreyrou's book is OK-ish (can be read in a day) but really - it's a bunch of stories about how psychopaths lie to stay in power. It's a nice book, but in the end we are talking about people that pathologically lie, and even dumber* investors that throw money based on signalling/stories and not facts/prototypes/verification of any kind of anything. That's pretty much it. Much better literature would be 'Snakes in Suits' and 'Without Conscience', both by Robert Hare, the guy that has created the psychopath checklist (the tool used to clinically diagnose psychopaths, like a psychopath test). I highly recommend both of the books (especially 'Without Conscience'!) * that's just my opinion: throwing millions without anything close to a prototype that works AT ALL is just something that an imbecile could only do. Goes to show what kind of people hold capital in the millions. Remarkable.
sachin18590 8y ago
I often question if putting so much blame just on her while treating her investors with a lens of victoimhood is a good idea? For all I know, Theranos was a vicious death spiral which grew so big purely because there were a ton of investors writing big checks to Holmes either without doing basic due diligence or being knowingly complicit in the lackings of the company. Their checks were the reason Holmes got empowered so much in the first place and dared to think that she is perhaps on the right path and could continue pulling off a fraud.

83 points by danso 8y ago

It's really shameful that Tim Draper continues to defend Elizabeth Holmes even after all the details about her harassment of ex-employees and whistleblowers have come out.

skwb 8y ago
Considering this is the same Tim Draper that wanted to separate California into 6 states that would effectively concentrate silicon valley wealth while leaving counties to the eastern states some of the poorest in the nation just to weaken the state's democratic position, I feel happy he lost his money in this company [0]. [0]. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-states_n_4890982.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-state...

clra 8y ago

> The Oscar-winning director presents a sympathetic portrait of the Silicon Valley CEO who fooled the world into believing she had built a better blood test I really don't know how to feel how to feel about that one. The final jury is out until we get to see the new series of course, but I hope he didn't portray her as too sympathetic. I recently finished Carreyrou’s book and found it legitimately disturbing. Holmes and Balwani didn't just lie and cover up bad results, but actively crucified any of their employees who dared question what they were doing in a way that's hard to interpret as anything except sinister malice. This might be best exemplified by Tyler Shultz, who ended up spending $400k in legal fees defending himself from Holmes and her lawyers [1]. Carreyrou was harassed by their legal team to suppress the stories that eventually led to Theranos' exposure, and you can't help but think throughout the book that the only way he could've done what he did was having the counter-legal team of the WSJ available, and deep pockets to fund it. Throughout the reveal process, anyone who was thought to be possibly leaking information was threatened with recriminatory lawsuits, and in America's shining light of a legal system any kind of company-on-individual action is a recipe for misery and bankruptcy. Holmes is one of the least sympathetic people I can imagine, and it'd be unfortunate (and a disservice to any of the people whose life she either destroyed [2] or tried to destroy) if Gibney improperly represented that through some kind of misguided artistic notion, especially given that there's a non-zero chance that something as high profile as an HBO documentary could indirectly influence the results of the upcoming criminal trial. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/the-personal-bloodbath-behind-theranos-rise-and-fall/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/the-personal-bloodba... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)#Death

sizzzzlerz 8y ago
She deserves no sympathy what so ever. Much like cyclist, Lance Armstrong, she perpetrated out-right fraud on her investors, employees, and customers and threatened to ruin them financially and legally if they exposed her. The kicker here, however, is that the fraudulent product she was marketing had the potential of seriously impacting the life and health of those who used her product. Trusting the results could result in actually missing a diagnosis of serious issues, resulting in delayed treatment, bad health, and early death or costing the patient money for treatment of a condition they didn't actually have. Her motives may have been pure early on but once it became apparent that her product simply didn't work, any action taken beyond closing up shop or changing direction and investing in a new approach was unforgivable. In the sentencing to come, following the trial, I hope the judge throws the book at her with a substantial prison sentence and the loss of any ill-gotten gains.
- Benjammer 8y ago
  It really does have a Lance Armstrong vibe, where, sure, the thing itself was pretty bad, but the defensive actions surrounding the core thing were ten times worse. Destroying many people's lives, and livelihoods, at the slightest hint of a challenge. Theranos, though, does have the added negative attribute that the product was a medical device and not just an individual's professional athletics career.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Armstrong's actions had implications way outside of his individual career.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Still nowhere near as important as a medical device with false promises.
      - jacquesm 8y ago

hhs 8y ago

"I think the connection between scientology and Elizabeth Holmes is the “prison of belief”. Look at what happens to [Theranos board member] George Shultz – the grandfather of [eventual whistleblower] Tyler Shultz; the noted Secretary of State. Even when his grandson comes to him and says, “You know Grandpa, there’s rampant fraud at Theranos”, he can’t undo or retract or unwind the belief that he has. He’s in a prison of belief of Elizabeth Holmes. He’s committed to her, and for him to say, “Oh wow, that’s terrible”, would mean that he has to go back to the beginning and admit that he was duped and fooled." In the social sciences, they call this 'belief perseverance'. To take this to an extreme, think of how many generations of people were convinced of geocentrism.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
I think that captured the key essence of a lot of the fraud that goes on. Essentially you have people who consider themselves to be reasonably critical thinkers, and the dissonance of how wrong they were is so great that the external information is rejected. Being aware of this effect is critical for people who want to be active listeners. You have to accept the possibility that the information you are hearing that goes against everything you believe, might be true, and then work to understand whether or not you can test the two disjoint beliefs for validity. Were I in the position George found himself in, I would start by asking deeper questions about how the process works, how it fails, and how one can test that it is working as expected. If people get evasive it lends credence to the dissonant information, if they are forthcoming and have answers to the questions, it tends to support the core belief. "Trust but verify" is often used in this sort of context. Always listen for meta-data and probe it when it throws up red flags. When someone gets angry in response to what seems like a simple question, follow that anger to see where it originates.
- hhs 8y ago
  Good points, these are useful ways to confront it. Sometimes, I also think of Andy Grove's motto, "only the paranoid survive", which helps to check and challenge ideas.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

rdtsc 8y ago

> But I think that the more important thing about Elizabeth to me is that she did have a mission – a noble mission Did she? The proof offered was that she didn't pay herself as much money as Madoff did, so consequently her mission must have been noble. People do things not just for money, especially if they are already well of. They want validation, power, fame, etc. > Fake it ‘til you make it is something that’s imbued in the DNA of a lot of Silicon Valley companies. Ok, well Google and FB are shady and play fast and loose with people's data. Why shouldn't Holmes play fast and loose with people's blood tests. Let's not judge her too much. > Elizabeth exists on a spectrum of people who over-promise and sometimes way under-deliver and sometimes commit fraud. The spectrum also extends to how much she was praised and touted as a great young entrepreneur. She wasn't just quietly running a scam, but basking in the lime-light dancing to "U Can't Touch This" (figuratively and literally https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/tech/the-inventor-theranos-documentary/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/tech/the-inventor-theranos-do...). > Because if she’s just the bad apple – you know that’s what they said about the people at Abu Ghraib. Right, she is just like the people tortured at Abu Ghraib. Poor thing, how will she ever recover. There is element here I think where the directory himself wants to stir controversy and one way to do it is to present her in a rather sympathetic way. Otherwise not sure how to interpret the "Abu Ghraib" and fraud is just "a spectrum" comments. It might pay off I suppose. But it's a bit too transparent.

jonny_eh 8y ago
> Right, she is just like the people tortured at Abu Ghraib. Poor thing, how will she ever recover. I think he meant that she's like the torturers at Abu Ghraib. She may be guilty, but so is the system around her. During that scandal, some people argued that the American war on terror wasn't corrupt, there were just a few bad apples that took it too far.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  Ah, you'r right. But it still doesn't work to bring that Abu Ghraib into this at all. The story then becomes that she was just part of a broken system and isn't responsible?

hjk05 8y ago

> You know, if you’re pursuing a noble goal, it’s OK to fake it ‘til you make it. This seems completely be starkly in contrast with reality. She did not persue a noble goal and secondarily achieve power and wealth. If that was the case she would never had sent out bogus resulst for patients of hunted innoscent employees for presenting the truth. All the facts on the table tell a tale of a person who wanted money, power and influence, and sat with a 2-7 off suit and decided to bluff on the off-chance that everyone else would fold. It’s sad that Alex Gibney has decided to spin a story he wants to tell around a reality that doesn’t support it.

gabbygab 8y ago
I wonder if Holmes was able to charm and dupe this director like she did so many other people. I read that sociopaths could be exceptionally manipulative and conniving. The only goal of Holmes was to make money. Just like everyone else. The "noble goal" is just BS PR she concocted for herself to more easily influence and trick investors. Like her Steve Jobs' turtleneck and her fake "manly" voice. Almost everything about her was fake and her only goal was cold hard cash. But I guess it makes for a better story if we turn her into a fallen saint who failed to achieve her "noble goal".
darkpuma 8y ago
Bad Blood makes it pretty clear that "becoming a billionaire" was her number one priority.

robertAngst 8y ago

This is going to be Tesla and Elon, but he won't be nearly as bad because he has government contracts with SpaceX. To be fair 60B Mkt Cap is irresponsibly high on the part of investors. The same could be said about this situation.

projectramo 8y ago
Wait, you're telling me the Tesla doesn't drive??!!! They've fooled so many people!
- AndrewBissell 8y ago
  Charles Ponzi : Ivar Krueger :: Elizabeth Holmes : Elon Musk

samfisher83 8y ago

Why is she not in jail. The fyre guy is in jail and she messed with patients lives. I think its much worse that what he did.

AndrewBissell 8y ago
Her criminal trial hasn't started yet and she's out on bail. The SEC slapped her with a 10-year D&O ban which, short of a lifetime ban, is their most severe civil penalty.
twblalock 8y ago
She is going on trial and there is a good chance she will be jailed when it is over.
draw_down 8y ago
She has better friends ;)
thoman23 8y ago
She and Balwani are both facing 20 years in federal prison.

foolsgold 8y ago

The first time I saw a picture of Elizabeth Holmes I thought she was bat shit crazy and I thought what she was doing was a scam, solely based on how she looked.

Intermernet 8y ago
That's generally a very inaccurate way to judge people, and even if it was correct, will mostly lead to prejudice and bad judgement in the future. Don't judge a book by it's cover, even if you were right once. I can't believe that requires stating.
- Udik 8y ago
  > Don't judge a book by it's cover Why not? Covers are chosen to appeal the type of audience that is more likely to enjoy that type of book. It's actually very easy to judge a book by its cover and in some way you're supposed to. People are not much different: while of course it's possible to misjudge people based on how they appear, the look they choose, deliberately and consistently, certainly tells something about them.
creddit 8y ago
This is the single dumbest thing I've ever read on Hacker News.
- paulcole 8y ago
  A high bar to clear indeed.

chrisa 8y ago

Does anyone know if it’s possible to see the actual deposition tapes somewhere? Just curious

robterrell 8y ago
I believe the podcast "The Dropout" plays some of them.

thrax 8y ago

Holmes only fault was that her "reality distortion field" wasn't strong enough. There are 100s of theranoses in sv/SF that won't see the light of day, thus escaping the kind of scrutiny theranos had. All this soul searching is bankrupt at it's core. She was just playing the role that SV sells to any entrepreneur it encounters. "Move fast, break things, if the world doesn't match your expectation then change the world." It's bullshit all the way down. Enjoy your iPhones, Ubers, taskrabbits, doordashes and Amazon's that are all predicated on exploiting legal loopholes and turning a profit until they get big enough that politicians overlook or change laws to accommodate them for a piece of the pie.

coldtea 8y ago
>Enjoy your iPhones, Ubers, taskrabbits, doordashes and Amazon's that are all predicated on exploiting legal loopholes and turning a profit until they get big enough that politicians overlook or change laws to accommodate them for a piece of the pie. Don't know about the others, but my iPhone was sold to me as tech that worked well, from version 1, and that I wanted (wouldn't go as far as to say needed). So, there's that. Not sure what the link to Theranos is.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
This is unmitigated bullshit. You can make reasoned arguments for and against the business models of the companies you've mentioned, but to throw them all in the same bucket of "rampant fraud and malice" is just false equivalency of the highest degree.

georgewsinger 8y ago

Contrarian question: is Elizabeth Holmes really as bad as consensus makes her out to be? I read Bad Blood when it came out. Here are some questions I had: 1. Base rate insensitivity. Carreyrou argues that Theranos prototype(s) were abundant in Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Yet, as far as I recall, it was never specified what the acceptable error rate is for a blood testing machine, and precisely how deviant Theranos' machines were. If we found out, for example, that an acceptable Type 1 error rate for a blood machine was 1%, and that Theranos' machines were yielding 3% Type 1 errors, I wouldn't be as offended had they been yielding 20% error rates. So exactly how error prone were Theranos machines compared to base rate? It was never specified. This makes it really hard to quantify the level of harm they were (or might have) imposed on society. 2. Theranos might have had a legitimate path to product. No one seems to dispute that Theranos had actual prototypes that functioned to some degree. The issue is that they functioned (i) with unsuitably high error rates (see above) and that (ii) Theranos' machines were on their own only able to test for certain things. But it's still unclear to me if they had an actual path to finishing their machines to spec. (The book concentrated on Holmes' misleading people on how much progress they had made, but this is distinct from whether or not Theranos had a secret plan to finish things). For sake of argument suppose Theranos needed another 3 years to finish their machines to spec. If Holmes had pulled it off, we might had called her a hero (at least I might have). So did Holmes have a path? It's unclear reading the book, from what I recall. Of course, the history of SV is full of people pushing the edges. This leads us to point 3: 3. Carreyrou's anecdotes of harm were weak. Carreyrou was unable to find compelling cases of people being severely harmed by Theranos machines, or so one could argue. Here "severe harm" to me means: failure to identify life threatening diseases (Type 2) causing, i.e., death. If I recall Carreyrou did find one case of Theranos machines misdiagnosing severe diseases (Type 1 error causing someone thousands of dollars of further blood tests + serious anxiety along the way). Of course, that's not a good thing. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. But only one case? (Keep in mind that normal blood tests already can give people Type 1 errors [causing anxiety, further medical expenses, etc]; see point 1). And compare this harm to the amount of good Theranos would had been able to add to society had they succeeded in their engineering efforts (assuming they did have a path to victory). 4. Holmes had skin in the game. If I recall, Holmes fought tooth and nail to maximize her equity in Theranos, and when the (alleged) house of cards came down, she had less than $1M in net worth. This strikes me as consistent behavior with someone who genuinely believed in her plan (and hence the long-term value of Theranos). At worst Holmes was totally delusional, but it seems less likely to me that she was a legitimate con artist. I just want to clarify: it's been a while since I've read Bad Blood (and actually, I quite enjoyed the book). And I don't condone misleading investors, fraudulent behavior, etc. I'm sure I'm missing some serious things Theranos did that could have been criminal. But Carreyrou (himself not an innovator) seemed at times to do a poor job considering the alternate viewpoint sincerely: that Holmes was just pushing the edges, and that it was at the end of the day worth it. His book no doubt set the dominoes in motion for Theranos to implode. So I felt compelled to explore this alternative viewpoint and to get it in writing. Cheers.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Folks that are commenting here that "well Big Company XYZ does some shady stuff how is that any different" honestly make me very sad. If you've read Bad Blood and can honestly say that the behavior of Google, Tesla, et al reaches anywhere close to the level of deceit, malice and downright sociopathy exhibited by Holmes and Balwani, I question your moral compass.

rofo1 8y ago

Anything less than the following is just displaying lack of morality in our whole society: Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Balwani are absolute psychopaths without remorse or conscience. We should not give them this much attention. I can't help but feel that we are doing something wrong by talking and writing about them, as if they are something special. They should be in jail, and the facts of the case should be made public, and that's it - end of story. If we portray them in any other way, we are just doing disservice to everyone. For further reading, Carreyrou's book is OK-ish (can be read in a day) but really - it's a bunch of stories about how psychopaths lie to stay in power. It's a nice book, but in the end we are talking about people that pathologically lie, and even dumber* investors that throw money based on signalling/stories and not facts/prototypes/verification of any kind of anything. That's pretty much it. Much better literature would be 'Snakes in Suits' and 'Without Conscience', both by Robert Hare, the guy that has created the psychopath checklist (the tool used to clinically diagnose psychopaths, like a psychopath test). I highly recommend both of the books (especially 'Without Conscience'!) * that's just my opinion: throwing millions without anything close to a prototype that works AT ALL is just something that an imbecile could only do. Goes to show what kind of people hold capital in the millions. Remarkable.

sachin18590 8y ago

I often question if putting so much blame just on her while treating her investors with a lens of victoimhood is a good idea? For all I know, Theranos was a vicious death spiral which grew so big purely because there were a ton of investors writing big checks to Holmes either without doing basic due diligence or being knowingly complicit in the lackings of the company. Their checks were the reason Holmes got empowered so much in the first place and dared to think that she is perhaps on the right path and could continue pulling off a fraud.