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It was John Carreyrou at the WSJ who did so. The rest of the press printed all of Holmes' lies verbatim (and some retracted after the scandal came to light).

foobarian 5y ago
I feel like most technical people knew Theranos' claims were not real, similar to any fusion-type startup claims. Sure they may sound good but it takes extraordinary evidence to really prove. I can't figure out how most commercial partners and especially a major pharmacy chain fell for the fraud. Do they not have ongoing QA via statistics etc.? If they didn't monitor Theranos do they not monitor other providers either? Theranos' big claim was they could do tests on a much smaller amount of blood. Perhaps they didn't end up doing that for Walgreens since they used externally sourced hardware, in which case they were just another test provider and if they tested out OK in ongoing QA, I don't see a problem with that from partner POV, but just from the investor POV who expected a new technology to get an edge over the competition. IIRC they were using smaller than usual blood samples and feeding them into external testing hardware by watering down to required size. This sounds bad; but if it doesn't show up in QA - then maybe it's a legitimate advancement. If it makes testing less reliable and it doesn't show up in QA - then QA needs to be fixed. If it does show up in QA - Walgreens never should have agreed. If it does show up in QA but Walgreens never noticed - that is a problem to address. I guess the initial deal was done on salesmanship and promises, so maybe they would have found out sooner or later.
- royjacobs 5y ago
  The podcasts "Bad Blood" (by Carreyrou) and "The Dropout" (about the currently ongoing trial against Holmes) cover these questions and more. I can highly recommend them.
- dekhn 5y ago
  I was already pretty suspcious of Theranos and then I talked to the VC I was advising. They said their alarms were tripped when Theranos didn't agree to sign any NDAs when talking about their tech, so the VC sent a junior partner to a walgreens to get the test. While being tested, they noticed it was a blood draw (the whole point of the test was that it didn't need to be a blood draw) and realized theranos was just farming out the tests to conventional equipment. RThey were already "found out" well before the articles were published, it's just that most VC aren't going to go out of their way to tank you, they just decline to invest
  - ghaff 5y ago
    And it’s not just because they don’t want to tank someone. It’s one thing to be deeply suspicious that something smells way off. It’s another to accuse a person or company of fraud with no hard evidence.
thrashh 5y ago
But that’s why you need to pick the news sources that you consume, just like how you don’t eat at every restaurant that you see. You could make a blanket statement like restaurant food isn’t very good, and on average that might be true, but anyone that knows what they’re doing would just laugh at that statement.
redis_mlc 5y ago
Well, it's awfully rare for a non-M.D. to start a medical company just from a regulatory standpoint.

foobarian 5y ago

I feel like most technical people knew Theranos' claims were not real, similar to any fusion-type startup claims. Sure they may sound good but it takes extraordinary evidence to really prove. I can't figure out how most commercial partners and especially a major pharmacy chain fell for the fraud. Do they not have ongoing QA via statistics etc.? If they didn't monitor Theranos do they not monitor other providers either? Theranos' big claim was they could do tests on a much smaller amount of blood. Perhaps they didn't end up doing that for Walgreens since they used externally sourced hardware, in which case they were just another test provider and if they tested out OK in ongoing QA, I don't see a problem with that from partner POV, but just from the investor POV who expected a new technology to get an edge over the competition. IIRC they were using smaller than usual blood samples and feeding them into external testing hardware by watering down to required size. This sounds bad; but if it doesn't show up in QA - then maybe it's a legitimate advancement. If it makes testing less reliable and it doesn't show up in QA - then QA needs to be fixed. If it does show up in QA - Walgreens never should have agreed. If it does show up in QA but Walgreens never noticed - that is a problem to address. I guess the initial deal was done on salesmanship and promises, so maybe they would have found out sooner or later.

royjacobs 5y ago
The podcasts "Bad Blood" (by Carreyrou) and "The Dropout" (about the currently ongoing trial against Holmes) cover these questions and more. I can highly recommend them.
dekhn 5y ago
I was already pretty suspcious of Theranos and then I talked to the VC I was advising. They said their alarms were tripped when Theranos didn't agree to sign any NDAs when talking about their tech, so the VC sent a junior partner to a walgreens to get the test. While being tested, they noticed it was a blood draw (the whole point of the test was that it didn't need to be a blood draw) and realized theranos was just farming out the tests to conventional equipment. RThey were already "found out" well before the articles were published, it's just that most VC aren't going to go out of their way to tank you, they just decline to invest
- ghaff 5y ago
  And it’s not just because they don’t want to tank someone. It’s one thing to be deeply suspicious that something smells way off. It’s another to accuse a person or company of fraud with no hard evidence.

thrashh 5y ago

But that’s why you need to pick the news sources that you consume, just like how you don’t eat at every restaurant that you see. You could make a blanket statement like restaurant food isn’t very good, and on average that might be true, but anyone that knows what they’re doing would just laugh at that statement.

redis_mlc 5y ago

Well, it's awfully rare for a non-M.D. to start a medical company just from a regulatory standpoint.