3 ms·

Risking patients' lives and defrauding investors/doctors doesn't warrant prosecution?

by bdibs 8y ago

foobar_ 8y ago
There's people doing that all over the place. There's people getting funded on all sorts of crap. Why don't we get them all and make documentaries on them ? Is Silicon Valley better than Wall Street ? I doubt it. People are selling cures for cancer and penis enlargement pills that don't work. If you ask me that's the real travesty, the daily fraudsters of Silicon Valley. The way Holmes was convicted almost seemed like a witch-hunt. Who cares if she married some older dude or doesn't blink or tried to speak in a lower tone ? I speak in lower tone to intimidate people. I do it because I'm an asian dude and my voice has a higher pitch than usual. Travis Kalanick roamed around with prostitutes, bribed and did all sorts of seedy things at the height of Uber's fame. Can we have a documentary on him please ? Can we get Jim Carrey to play him in a movie ? No ? Why not ? How many countries is Uber in ? I honestly don't care if she defrauded the investors or told a million lies, I know a witch-hunt when I see one. I'm no politician. I prefer to side with my own kind. As a technologist my only real question is, did her product work ? Why not ? Could it be made better ?
- chillacy 8y ago
  Travis did crazy shit and eventually got kicked out for it, but Uber was a real app that worked. From what I understand, the blood tests didn’t. Simple as that.
  - foobar_ 8y ago
    Travis is not exactly kicked out. Uber had lot of things wrong when it first started out. Uber was shit for highways when it first started out. When was phone anonymisation introduced ? What if Uber was halted completely with the first stalker fucker ? Do you care about the increase in total accidents ? How many people dead because of Uber ? > 0. Give me the gory technical details of why her product didn't work. The way she was taken down was a witch-hunt, even if she was a horrible person who didn't blink. Thats what I meant in my original comment. IMO Uber has committed blunders in comparison, now where is my Uber movie !
    - acqq 8y ago
      > Give me the gory technical details of why her product didn't work. I think this book has enough details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in_a_Silicon_Valley_Startup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in... And the crucial article is 2015: https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blo...
      - foobar_ 8y ago
        I still stand by my claim. It was blown way out of proportion. I think there are plenty of companies that did far worse that we don't hold equally accountable for. I hope she gets a second run after this mess.
        Pyxl101 8y ago
        Elizabeth Holmes repeatedly lied to a wide variety of different people about the capabilities of her technology. It's fine to have an ambitious plan that might not work out. It's fine to have a dream so crazy you have no idea how to achieve it. It's not fine to lie about what technology you have today or its capabilities. It's one thing to make forward-looking statements that are optimistic, and another thing to misrepresent where you are right now, or what you have already done, or to deliberately mislead people. Elizabeth Holmes has done this repeatedly. Here are some examples of the lies that Holmes told, according to the SEC (1): 1) Holmes lied about how many blood tests her technology could perform. It could at best perform a dozen or so, but she lied and claimed it could perform hundreds. 2) Theranos gave fake demonstrations of its technology to major partners such as Walgreens. Holmes made it look like blood test demonstrations given to Walgreens were being performed on Theranos technology, when in fact third party commercial technology was being used. 3) Theranos gave investors fake demonstrations and fake information about its clinical trials. When investors visited Theranos, they frequently had their blood tested, and were given the impression these tests were run on Theranos machines. In fact, Theranos often ran these blood tests on third party commercial machines. 4) Holmes lied about military contracts. She told multiple investors as well as journalists that Theranos technology had been deployed by the Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and on medevac helicopters that transported casualties. Completely untrue. 5) Theranos made ridiculously unreasonable financial projections. In a year when Theranos had on the order of $100 thousand in revenue, she told investors that Theranos was on track to make $100 million in revenue. It would be fine for her to say that she planned to do all of these things. It is not fine for her to lie to investors claiming that these things had already happened when they had not. Lying is never OK, and lying like this is fraud. No sane investor would trust Holmes after what happened. (1) https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-41-theranos-holmes.pdf https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-4...
- abvdasker 8y ago
  > There's people doing that all over the place. There's people getting funded on all sorts of crap. Why don't we get them all and make documentaries on them ? Is Silicon Valley better than Wall Street ? I doubt it. Just because there is a lot of corporate fraud out there doesn't mean we should not try to stamp it out when we're able to identify it. This is like saying that you should not prosecute a murderer because there are some serial killers out there. "Forget this murderer in front of us, it's all those serial killers that we should really be trying to stop." Also, your characterization of Kalanick seems quite fantastical to me. I don't think it's well established that he did any of the things you're talking about, though if you had sources for that information maybe I could be convinced.

Risking patients' lives and defrauding investors/doctors doesn't warrant prosecution?

by bdibs 8y ago

Risking patients' lives and defrauding investors/doctors doesn't warrant prosecution?

There's people doing that all over the place. There's people getting funded on all sorts of crap. Why don't we get them all and make documentaries on them ? Is Silicon Valley better than Wall Street ? I doubt it. People are selling cures for cancer and penis enlargement pills that don't work. If you ask me that's the real travesty, the daily fraudsters of Silicon Valley. The way Holmes was convicted almost seemed like a witch-hunt. Who cares if she married some older dude or doesn't blink or tried to speak in a lower tone ? I speak in lower tone to intimidate people. I do it because I'm an asian dude and my voice has a higher pitch than usual. Travis Kalanick roamed around with prostitutes, bribed and did all sorts of seedy things at the height of Uber's fame. Can we have a documentary on him please ? Can we get Jim Carrey to play him in a movie ? No ? Why not ? How many countries is Uber in ? I honestly don't care if she defrauded the investors or told a million lies, I know a witch-hunt when I see one. I'm no politician. I prefer to side with my own kind. As a technologist my only real question is, did her product work ? Why not ? Could it be made better ?

chillacy 8y ago
Travis did crazy shit and eventually got kicked out for it, but Uber was a real app that worked. From what I understand, the blood tests didn’t. Simple as that.
- foobar_ 8y ago
  Travis is not exactly kicked out. Uber had lot of things wrong when it first started out. Uber was shit for highways when it first started out. When was phone anonymisation introduced ? What if Uber was halted completely with the first stalker fucker ? Do you care about the increase in total accidents ? How many people dead because of Uber ? > 0. Give me the gory technical details of why her product didn't work. The way she was taken down was a witch-hunt, even if she was a horrible person who didn't blink. Thats what I meant in my original comment. IMO Uber has committed blunders in comparison, now where is my Uber movie !
  - acqq 8y ago
    > Give me the gory technical details of why her product didn't work. I think this book has enough details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in_a_Silicon_Valley_Startup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in... And the crucial article is 2015: https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blo...
    - foobar_ 8y ago
      I still stand by my claim. It was blown way out of proportion. I think there are plenty of companies that did far worse that we don't hold equally accountable for. I hope she gets a second run after this mess.
      - Pyxl101 8y ago
        Elizabeth Holmes repeatedly lied to a wide variety of different people about the capabilities of her technology. It's fine to have an ambitious plan that might not work out. It's fine to have a dream so crazy you have no idea how to achieve it. It's not fine to lie about what technology you have today or its capabilities. It's one thing to make forward-looking statements that are optimistic, and another thing to misrepresent where you are right now, or what you have already done, or to deliberately mislead people. Elizabeth Holmes has done this repeatedly. Here are some examples of the lies that Holmes told, according to the SEC (1): 1) Holmes lied about how many blood tests her technology could perform. It could at best perform a dozen or so, but she lied and claimed it could perform hundreds. 2) Theranos gave fake demonstrations of its technology to major partners such as Walgreens. Holmes made it look like blood test demonstrations given to Walgreens were being performed on Theranos technology, when in fact third party commercial technology was being used. 3) Theranos gave investors fake demonstrations and fake information about its clinical trials. When investors visited Theranos, they frequently had their blood tested, and were given the impression these tests were run on Theranos machines. In fact, Theranos often ran these blood tests on third party commercial machines. 4) Holmes lied about military contracts. She told multiple investors as well as journalists that Theranos technology had been deployed by the Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and on medevac helicopters that transported casualties. Completely untrue. 5) Theranos made ridiculously unreasonable financial projections. In a year when Theranos had on the order of $100 thousand in revenue, she told investors that Theranos was on track to make $100 million in revenue. It would be fine for her to say that she planned to do all of these things. It is not fine for her to lie to investors claiming that these things had already happened when they had not. Lying is never OK, and lying like this is fraud. No sane investor would trust Holmes after what happened. (1) https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-41-theranos-holmes.pdf https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-4...
abvdasker 8y ago
> There's people doing that all over the place. There's people getting funded on all sorts of crap. Why don't we get them all and make documentaries on them ? Is Silicon Valley better than Wall Street ? I doubt it. Just because there is a lot of corporate fraud out there doesn't mean we should not try to stamp it out when we're able to identify it. This is like saying that you should not prosecute a murderer because there are some serial killers out there. "Forget this murderer in front of us, it's all those serial killers that we should really be trying to stop." Also, your characterization of Kalanick seems quite fantastical to me. I don't think it's well established that he did any of the things you're talking about, though if you had sources for that information maybe I could be convinced.