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> However, a fair number of people I talked with back then thought she was absolutely brilliant and that her answers were the workings of a deeply complex mind.

> However, a fair number of people I talked with back then thought she was absolutely brilliant and that her answers were the workings of a deeply complex mind. There are a subset of people, and Elizabeth herself who, to this day, believe we and the world were robbed of Theranos' revolutionary advances, because they "really, truly, were this close and would have done it by now", and think that that is the miscarriage of justice.

SilasX 3y ago
SBF likewise claimed he had investors lined up to save FTX and depositors, right when he was forced to declare bankruptcy. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/technology/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/technology/sam-bankman-fr... Earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984977
justrealist 3y ago
Well to be fair, there are some diseases and conditions that Theranos detected without issue. And actually it would be really helpful to have a in-home or in-store instant diagnosis for those. The failure was in trying to be the everything box and committing fraud to get there. I actually do think it would have been revolutionary and the failure of Theranos has set the field back.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > Well to be fair, there are some diseases and conditions that Theranos detected without issue. With their own equipment? I don't believe so. Theranos as a company could reliably do this... they just did it with Siemens equipment with the labels removed. > I actually do think it would have been revolutionary It would be, were it possible. Not that we can't find things to be possible that were previously thought not to be, but this is pretty well established biology, and has been steadily researched for decades by both academia and industry (all of the big lab players would love it if they could do droplet analysis)... if there is an advance there, it's a pretty safe bet to say it was never coming from a 19 yo freshman chem eng dropout.

SilasX 3y ago

SBF likewise claimed he had investors lined up to save FTX and depositors, right when he was forced to declare bankruptcy. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/technology/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/technology/sam-bankman-fr... Earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984977

justrealist 3y ago

Well to be fair, there are some diseases and conditions that Theranos detected without issue. And actually it would be really helpful to have a in-home or in-store instant diagnosis for those. The failure was in trying to be the everything box and committing fraud to get there. I actually do think it would have been revolutionary and the failure of Theranos has set the field back.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> Well to be fair, there are some diseases and conditions that Theranos detected without issue. With their own equipment? I don't believe so. Theranos as a company could reliably do this... they just did it with Siemens equipment with the labels removed. > I actually do think it would have been revolutionary It would be, were it possible. Not that we can't find things to be possible that were previously thought not to be, but this is pretty well established biology, and has been steadily researched for decades by both academia and industry (all of the big lab players would love it if they could do droplet analysis)... if there is an advance there, it's a pretty safe bet to say it was never coming from a 19 yo freshman chem eng dropout.