2 ms·

No, not at all. Polar opposites. Theranos was actual lies. TFA is just being honest about a low sample size.

• pvaldes 3y ago
  If somebody claims: our device "accurately tests", and we discover later that "In fact the tests hadn't been done still" (at a meaningful way), It should be taken as a red flag. Specially when it came in the same package with "to make lots of tests would be really cheap" (but for some reason they didn't tried it). Maybe be a great, honest work, brilliant step?. Yes. But please don't claim that your model is reproducible if you didn't ever tried seriously to reproduce it first. What if the results are just a random effect?. What if the test says just positive most of the time? The test negative response has been tested in a control group of 4 people? This is 20 bucks well spent. --At this moment-- isn't different than other thousand projects that seemed too good to be true, took the money and soon vanished. I hope to be wrong.
  • dheera 3y ago
    > didn't ever tried seriously to reproduce it first Maybe they found something worth testing and just need more funding to actually do the tests? I have no problem with early free speech about "I found something interesting" as long as you're honest about the sample size and don't misrepresent it.
• jacquesm 3y ago
  Without a larger n you can't really tell what the fp rate is and that means that the accuracy figure isn't very useful. If accuracy holds in light of a false positive rate that is much lower than other tests then this may well be very useful. But you can not conclude that at all based on the evidence presented.