
What Does It Mean That Elizabeth Holmes Doesn’t Blink? - georgecmu
https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/why-doesnt-elizabeth-holmes-blink-theranos.html
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samfisher83
>And yet I am willing to bet any amount of money that there are multiple
Elizabeth Holmeses operating with a lot of venture capital in Silicon Valley
that no one is going after. So I would just urge people to be a little bit
humble and realize that you never know quite as much as you think you know.

This was an interesting quote.

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differentView
> Nothing.

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tyingq
Could be something completely unrelated to psychology. Like Botox, for
example. I believe they use it to treat eye ticks, so it seems plausible it
might reduce blinking.

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foobar_
I for one think she was unduly prosecuted.

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

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foobar_
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 ?

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chillacy
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.

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foobar_
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 !

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acqq
> 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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in_a_Silicon_Valley_Startup)

And the crucial article is 2015:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-
blo...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-
tests-1444881901)

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foobar_
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.

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Pyxl101
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-
pr2018-4...](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-
pr2018-41-theranos-holmes.pdf)

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foobar_
Now look at the 10,000 other scams going on. Wait why are they still ... going
on. 1 down 9,999 more to go right ? Let's get them frauds!

Oh ... wait it doesn't work that way right. We just spent all our energy on
one, who has time to go after all of them. Let's watch the new movie! It has
Jennifer Lawrence in it. Let's all feel good about ourselves! My startup is a
fraud too but but I wouldn't lie like that. Note to self: If a major product
doesn't workout and is a major fuckup, have a fire accident and say valuable
I.P was destroyed in the fire and people have died. The tragedy! The tragedy!

Honestly she either goes into oblivion or she has a second run. I hope she has
a second run and makes it big because the sequel might as well be called -
Vampire of Silicon Valley.

