
WSJ journalist John Carreyrou shares year-long Theranos investigation [video] - bakztfuture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgwJA-GOlg
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w1ntermute
I really liked the point made about how Carreyrou being an NYC-based
investigative journalist (with a focus on healthcare, not tech) who is largely
disconnected from SV has enabled him to approach this story in a way that SV
tech journalists would be afraid to, because it could jeopardize their
careers.

Carreyrou was part of a WSJ/NYT team that received a Pulitzer last year[0] for
a series of pieces on Medicare billing[1]. That's one of the reasons why I'm
surprised some prominent Valley personalities didn't take his articles more
seriously from the beginning[2,3] - he's not some two-bit tech blogger with an
axe to grind. There's a world of difference between investigative journalists,
like Carreyrou or Bob Woodward, and tech bloggers like Michael Arrington or
Sarah Lacy.

0: [http://www.poynter.org/2015/for-the-wall-street-journal-a-
pu...](http://www.poynter.org/2015/for-the-wall-street-journal-a-pulitzer-
long-in-the-making/337879/)

1: [http://graphics.wsj.com/medicare-
billing/](http://graphics.wsj.com/medicare-billing/)

2: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/early-
ther...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/early-theranos-
investor-remains-supportive-even-without-answers-ifydlf03)

3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzI763-NPug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzI763-NPug)

~~~
jonas21
> There's a world of difference between investigative journalists, like
> Carreyrou or Bob Woodward, and tech bloggers like Michael Arrington or Sarah
> Lacy.

Or, for that matter, Jason Calacanis. It was really uncomfortable watching
parts of the video where Jason would go off on speculative tangents and John
Carreyrou would have to bring things back to statements supported by facts.

~~~
CPLX
Jason's a personality and pundit, that's sort of his job, much like objective
and sourced facts is Carreyrou's job.

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danso
FWIW Carreyou and his WSJ colleagues were awarded the Pulitzer for
Investigative Reporting last year for a project on Medicare fraud:

[http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7226](http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7226)

The work they published to win the award was great, but he'd been fighting
that fight for many years...and his dogged pursuit led to the CMS agreeing to
publish the reimubrsement data in full, for the first time ever:

[https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/sta...](https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/medicare-provider-charge-data/physician-
and-other-supplier.html)

If you're interested in what the data contains, it's only a couple of GB as a
flat table, but contains Medicare reimbursements for every doctor, for every
type of reimbursed procedure, which allows for a lot of interesting analysis
about healthcare in general...I wrote up a walkthrough that explains how
Carreyou arrived at his numbers for the lead story in the investigation:
[http://2015.padjo.org/tutorials/sql-walks/exploring-wsj-
medi...](http://2015.padjo.org/tutorials/sql-walks/exploring-wsj-medicare-
investigation-with-sql/)

I've never met him or asked him how he did his work...but it underscores what
a great thing he and the WSJ managed to accomplish: producing an important
investigative story and pushing for the release of the data so that anyone
else could reproduce it.

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icpmacdo
I thought this was a great conversation. There right about the strangest part
of all of this is the CEO mixing it up on Twitter while the company is
obviously suffering from some serious issues.

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v3gas
Any TL;DR?

~~~
achow
It’s recap of all the news & revelations on Theranos till Walgreen’s shutting
down its Theranos Wellness Center (i.e., till yesterday).

John Carreyrou just summarizes the events in chronological order through his
answers to the interviewers questions.

