
The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press - forgotmyoldpw
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/theranos-silicon-valley-media
======
minimaxir
It's worth noting that The New York Times, where Nick Bilton worked
previously, did not write any articles about Theranos/Holmes. (I checked)

The discussion about the suspiciously positive press strongly resembles uBeam
([http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-
cord/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/)): the wunderkind
founder, the game changing product. But no _practical_ proof of concept and a
weak defense when others point out it violates the laws of physics.
([http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/07/wireless-power-
charger/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/07/wireless-power-charger/))

~~~
clorenzo
She was featured in this one:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/12/t-magazine/eli...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/12/t-magazine/elizabeth-
holmes-tech-visionaries-brian-chesky.html)

~~~
w1ntermute
Although that article is (misleadingly) hosted on nytimes.com, it was not
published in the _New York Times_ , but in _T: The New York Times Style
Magazine_. Also, it was written by Silicon Valley socialite Laura Arrillaga-
Andreessen, and not an NYT reporter.

~~~
nedwin
And the author was slammed by the NYTimes editor for not disclosing conflict
of interest throughout that piece (Marc Andreesen invested heavily in AirBNB
through A16Z / Laura Arrillaga-Andreesen is his wife)

[http://recode.net/2015/10/29/nyt-public-editor-blasts-
arrill...](http://recode.net/2015/10/29/nyt-public-editor-blasts-arrillaga-
andreessen-magazine-feature-for-clear-conflict-of-interest/)

~~~
makomk
By the New York Times Public Editor, who isn't part of the normal editorial
process - she's meant to represent the readers and handle their complaints
about things like undisclosed conflicts of interest.

------
redsummer
Two points worth making:

1\. The original Theranos scientist who started the project - Ian Gibbons -
committed suicide after saying that "nothing was working" in 2013. After
Gibbons wife spoke to the press, Theranos threatened to sue her.

2\. The idea of a needle pricking the end of my finger, just to get one drop
(not enough for analysis anyway) is horrible. Far better to get it from an
area with less nerve endings which will get more blood - like the usual place
in the crook of the arm. The whole idea was stupid to begin with.

~~~
jimrandomh
If done correctly, getting a drop of blood with a finger prick hurts much less
than getting it from a vein in the crook of the arm. I say this from
experience, as a diabetic having done both many times.

------
zeemonkee3
> After two months of being stonewalled by the Theranos P.R. team, Carreyrou
> told me an entourage of lawyers arrived at the Journal’s Midtown Manhattan
> offices at one P.M. on June 23.

Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal.
Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a
particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right
track.

~~~
mathattack
Newspapers struggle to pay the bills, though. If it looks like a lawsuit will
cost a lot of money, many papers will just walk. It also increases the cost of
fact checking the story.

~~~
c5karl
> If it looks like a lawsuit will cost a lot of money, many papers will just
> walk.

What is this assertion based on? News organizations large and small carry
insurance to protect them from lawsuits like this.

Will the general counsel grill the newsroom leadership to make sure they can
back up what's being printed and that they're not violating the law?
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean they will be cowed by threats of nuisance
lawsuits.

~~~
wpietri
I'm also skeptical. The journalists I know would love a fight like this. The
marketing advantage to the paper could be huge. And the US legal protections
for newspapers are so strong that suits like this are very, very hard to win.

And that's just the general case. The WSJ isn't an ordinary paper; they can
charge $400 a year because their readers believe they can get a business
advantage. The moment readers think that anybody with a few lawyers can get a
negative story killed is the moment they stop relying on the paper.

And if somebody did end up taking them to the mat, they're owned by Rupert
Murdoch, a famously combative media boss and son of a reporter whose net worth
is north of $12 billion. The guy started Fox News, which might as well be
called the Angry Shouty Channel. I cannot think of a worse person in the world
to attempt to intimidate with a lawsuit.

------
aresant
“If you look at most tech publications, they have major conferences as their
revenue,” Jason Calacanis, the blogger and founder of Weblogs, told me. “If
you hit too hard, you lose keynotes, ticket buyers, and support in the tech
space.”

I find it bizarre to bio Calacanis as a "blogger and founder of Weblogs" in
the context of this quote.

It makes him sound like an informed third party offering his two cents.

When in fact Calacanis is less a "blogger" than a major force / champion of
startup news via his "this week in startups" podcast, founder of inside.com
which reports on startups, and runs Launch Festival which is exactly the kind
of major conference he is pointing the finger at.

And the author of the piece Nick Bilton has even appeared on Jason's start-up
show [http://muckrack.com/link/5Gn7/this-week-in-
startups](http://muckrack.com/link/5Gn7/this-week-in-startups) so can't be
that he's unaware that the outdated biline doesn't' make sense.

------
mbrundle
I'm a bit puzzled by this article. Sure, the tech media didn't question it
very much. But then again, I never really associated the tech media with any
level of serious investigative journalism. I doubt they have the time,
manpower or ability to really dig deep behind the PR barrier. Plus, as the
article mentions, they make a lot of money from keeping companies happy.

If I want someone to give me the lowdown on what's really going on, then I'll
turn to the NYT first, not TechCrunch. Surely I'm not alone in this?

~~~
MBCook
The fact that the tech press is a glorified PR copy machine doesn't mean we
shouldn't hold them to real standards.

Maybe some will rise to the challenge.

------
mikeryan
It's kind of funny seeing this on a day when three traditional news outlets
are screwing the pooch on the whole Craig Wright/Satoshi debacle.

~~~
sigmar
That is the first thing that came to mind when I read this headline. The BBC
article this morning on Craig Wright was embarrassing.

~~~
secfirstmd
The BBC's news coverage has gone down hill rapidly over the past few years
unfortunately.

~~~
dublinben
Their technology coverage has always been shockingly bad.

------
ShitlordVader
She worked as an undergraduate in a Stanford microfluidics laboratory and
happened to know a venture capitalist who was the original angel investor in
Theranos. She is not the wozniak she is the Jobs because she can play the
media and use them to help the company raise capital. Moving microfludics from
academia into business is a great thing. The culprit is that the journalists
did not even bother doing the bare minimum of background reading on the
technology Theranos is using.

I wish the media would ask how much of the market share the company will have
and if they plan on expanding beyond Walgreens. Also there were rumors that
small amounts of blood easily coagulate. If that is true then do they plan on
using a blood thinner or fractionating the blood in a centrifuge and then
testing it? How much uncertainty do they have in each of the tests they are
performing on one drop of blood? Do they have enough capital to narrow the
uncertainty? Are they having problems with the FDA approving their testing?
What will happen to all the medical lab techs? Will they be let go or is blood
testing only a small part of what lab techs do? Instead we get articles on
gender, turtle necks and start up culture...

[http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/](http://microfluidics.stanford.edu/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab-on-a-
chip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab-on-a-chip)

------
trekking101
Anybody care to run the numbers on j-school grads at 'traditional' publishers
v techcrunch et al? I stopped reading techcrunch years ago when it became
clear they largely copied & pasted PR. Rarely do they ask competitors/industry
pundits to comment, a standard journalistic practice.

~~~
ghaff
I wouldn't use J-School grads as a particular proxy for anything. I've known
J-School grads who worked for various IT publications (though not for less
conventional pubs like Techcrunch). But then I know a number of WSJ reporters
and op-ed (as well as at least one person who moved from IT trades to general
business) who don;t have J-School degrees. There are a lot of ways to learn
standard journalistic practice without going to school for it.

~~~
vemy
Juts like CS schools, I think the quality could be dependent on the specific
school they graduated from.

~~~
ghaff
This is a bit different. There are some accomplished programmers, software
architects, etc. who don't have CS degrees, I think it's fair to say that they
are in the distinct minority. On the other hand, I suspect that, among the top
tier of journalists (admittedly difficult to measure), the majority--perhaps
the great majority--do not have J-School degrees. There are better (e.g.
Columbia) and worse journalism schools, for sure. But it's not the sort of
prerequisite that other professional degrees can be.

------
musesum
Last week, I decided to look at the Glassdoor reviews. Lots of positive
reviews that sounded eerily similar. Then ran across the first negative review
that claimed that the positive reviews were written by PR. Then more negative
reviews making the same claim. Then re-read the positive reviews. All the
"cons" started to sound like "pros", if you were an investor or journalist.

------
spaceflunky
The media is 100% to blame here... I think in large part because of how they
treat female entrepreneurs, with well-meaning, but harmful attitudes.

IMO we live in a world where there are too few successful female entrepreneurs
and at the same time people are very eager to see that world change. So as a
result, if there is any inkling of a successful female entrepreneur, that
story gets gobbled up by the press ad nauseam.

A couple of problems created by this that stick out in my mind are: there's a
lot unfair pressure for said female entrepreneur to succeed. And a lot of
female entrepreneurs who would otherwise be ignored, suddenly find themselves
as celebrity icons despite having any real success deserving of such praise,
which creates a disastrous over confidence and the "personality" being placed
before the business.

Elizabeth Holes isn't the only one. Marissa Mayer was hailed a hero before
crashing and burning. Less know is Sophia Amoruso, who despite only have a
moderately popular online clothing shop (Nasty Gal), has written two books
about her success and has an upcoming Netflix series about how "awesome" she
is. And the press complete ignores the fact that Amoruso's company has gone
through multiple lay-off rounds, has atrocious Glassdoor reviews, a declining
relevancy, is being sued for firing pregnant women, and by all accounts is
struggling to stay in business. All of this is true about Amoruso, but she
still gets a Netflix series about how "wildly successful" she is...

~~~
jamesash
Surprised by the downvotes. Promoting Holmes as the next Jobs gave the tech
press a chance to show how it was trumpeting diversity and gender balance in
its coverage of founders. To those that downvoted - would you completely
disagree that this played a role here?

~~~
MBCook
> The media is 100% to blame

implies that nothing happened here but the media overhyped someone. While
clearly true, and I have no doubt having a young female entrepreneur was a
good angle, that's not the story.

If _anyone_ promised what Theranos promised it would be a big story. Could
have been a 73 year old Doctor. No big needle draws? Tons of tests right at
the doctors office? No more slow giant labs? A big breakthrough like that is
NEWS.

Having a female founder was just one more bullet on the 'cool story'
checklist. The hype would have been there without the female founder angle the
OP focused on.

Saying the media is 100% to blame also absolves Theranos, its board, and its
founder. Even when being overhyped they shouldn't have lied. They shouldn't
have hidden things. They could have acted _MUCH_ better.

They could have not sold their services while knowing they didn't work.

Absolute best case: they were wrong about how good their machines. But due to
hype they kept trying and thought 'we can fix this before were caught'. And it
just snowballed and snowballed.

I'll also point out the end of the comment tends to imply that women run
companies into the ground or aren't qualified to succeed since all anecdotes
are of failures.

For my anecdote: I've heard companies tend to elect women to be CEOs when
there is basically nothing left to lose and saving the company is nearly
impossible. Because by that point they figure it doesn't matter they don't
have the 'best', some other proven CEO that happens to usually be a guy.

~~~
jamesash
Thank you for explaining your point of view. Helpful.

------
forgetsusername
The question is: does anyone actually believe Theranos is the only one? They
may be the "worst", but I firmly believe there are a few tech darlings that
get exposed.

~~~
tryitnow
Bingo.

What is different is that most of the future frauds will be explicitly
financial in nature, whereas Theranos was a scientific fraud. Material
misrepresentation of revenues and costs structure, overinflated usage stats -
that sort of thing.

------
exit
it's hard to believe people still clock in at theranos these days, no?

------
pessimizer
I don't think that the press can be blamed for the Theranos meltdown. All
that's happened is that a bunch of investors are about to lose a bunch of
money, and Walgreens got screwed. The investors and the guy at Walgreens were
all people from Holmes' class (and people with personal connections to her and
her family.) The tech press are also from that same class (or worshippers of
that same class), and so they followed along in inflating the virtues of
someone who neither they or the investors bothered to vet because white rich
Stanford, fancy parents. Just because the tech press is terrible doesn't mean
that its awful input had a meaningful effect on anything. If anything, the
traditional business press at the WSJ registered the only significant effect;
a positive one.

But it isn't like the tech press coverage drew in the suckers - it wasn't a
public company. Of course, I haven't heard anything about institutional
investors. Maybe the public ended up getting screwed in the end anyway.

~~~
hkmurakami
The public is nominally screwed through their pension funds investing in VC
funds investing in Theranos, fwiw.

------
chmaynard
My hunch is that Holmes, clearly a highly intelligent woman, has a personality
infused with high levels of narcissism and sociopathy. Her intelligent,
curious side was probably overwhelmed by her negative traits after she had
some initial success with Theranos.

------
draw_down
Non-tech press outlet: "Uhh, it wasn't us, it was them."

~~~
taylorbuley
This is Nick Bilton, occasionally of the NYTimes. Definitely an insider, even
if not preaching from the usual pulpit. He's legit and worth reading.

~~~
joshdickson
Formerly of the NYTimes, he's now full time at Vanity Fair. This is the guy
who wrote the book (literally) on Twitter. Quite legit.

------
FussyZeus
I do actually feel bad for Holmes. Her later interviews sounded extremely like
someone who had gotten in massively over their head and had no idea how to get
out.

She'll be stained forever by this, her name and Theranos are practically
interchangeable at this point.

~~~
vox_mollis
When will this absurd apologism end? Many people have gone to federal prison
for FAR lesser frauds than Theranos is.

~~~
jessaustin
Whether she goes to prison or not, I don't understand how people have such
sympathy for a CEO who drove her top researcher to suicide. If that happened
in a movie critics would complain about the unbelievable mustache-twirling
caricature.

~~~
FussyZeus
Wait what? Seriously, can I get a link on that one?

~~~
jessaustin
Of course no one is going to come out and admit that Ian Gibbons's suicide was
caused by anything other than the "health and other problems" insinuated by
Theranos's PR flack. Also we have to treat every suicide as a tragic failure
of mental healthcare availability, rather than (occasionally) a rational
reaction to intolerable circumstances.

Gibbons was a top biochemist, hired away from academia with the copious
combination of sunshine and VC cash that has long been Holmes's specialty. He
staked a decade of his life and reputation on making the impossible real,
because that's what she hired him to do. By his own words, he failed in that
task. Then he committed suicide.

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't know anything about Gibbons or his suicide. Going off of what you said
though, just because he failed at the (impossible) job he was hired to do and
committed suicide doesn't mean Holmes "drove him to commit suicide." He may
have been working under immense pressure. At the same time, he most likely
knew the difficulty of his task when he accepted the job. He was, after all, a
top biochemist. Right?

~~~
jessaustin
Probably most people could justify a failed six-month project to themselves
with, "you live, you learn". A decade of one's "most productive years" hurts
quite a bit more. That decade looks a lot different in retrospect than it did
when Holmes was selling it.

I'm not saying I would have done the same, in the same position. Then again,
if I were the type to feel such a failure so keenly, I'd be more likely to be
a top biochemist in the first place. Both parties were adults. The point of
this thread is that Holmes ought to be treated as such.

