Theranos: trial of Elizabeth Holmes

[Brightonian]

Time article on the upcoming trial of Elizabeth Holmes:
https://time.com/6092115/elizabeth-holmes-trial/

[Stranger Mouse]

Who will play her in the movie?

[temptar]

Isn't it Jennifer Garner?

[Stranger Mouse]

Isn't it Jennifer Garner?

Apparently Amanda Seyfried https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... eth-holmes

[jaap]

Isn't it Jennifer Garner?

Apparently Amanda Seyfried https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... eth-holmes

Did neither of you follow the link in the first post? It's Jennifer Lawrence now.

[Stranger Mouse]

Isn't it Jennifer Garner?

Apparently Amanda Seyfried https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/20 ... eth-holmes

Did neither of you follow the link in the first post? It's Jennifer Lawrence now.

Apparently that just didn’t register when I read it which I can only put down to age and tiredness.

[Al Capone Junior]

WSJ video summing up the skitchuation and the trial

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cZjcqs0O3Kw

I must admit that I would not be a good choice of juror. Not that any lawyers would ever want me on a jury anyway

[Al Capone Junior]

ok I'm confused, what was up with the super deep voice on Elizabeth Holmes? That just seemed weird. It wasn't always like that, was it? If it was, my apologies, I don't want to mock someone's natural condition, but that does not seem like the natural state of most women, and Holmes is not exactly typical of anything.

[jaap]

ok I'm confused, what was up with the super deep voice on Elizabeth Holmes? That just seemed weird. It wasn't always like that, was it? If it was, my apologies, I don't want to mock someone's natural condition, but that does not seem like the natural state of most women, and Holmes is not exactly typical of anything.

It's been reported that she lowered her voice (possibly with some vocal training) in order sound more authoratitive, just like Margaret Thatcher did. Personally I find her eyes weirder than her voice. In interviews or speeches she seems to open her eyes extra wide and barely blink.

She seems to have worked very hard at her image and persona. The simple black clothes and the slightly unkempt hair were also a conscious part of that, portraying an image of someone who didn't have the time or inclination to look perfect because there are more important things to attend to.

[Al Capone Junior]

Too bad she wasted time on her persona when it was theranos' technology that really needed improvement.

More like needed to be made to exist at all. I worked on R&D for a benchtop analyzer for a while, and while this one actually worked, it was a far cry from the 200+ tests on a finger stick pipe dream that theranos was selling. It required more patient sample and did far fewer tests. But it worked and was reliable, you know, in a clinical medicine kind of way.

I would think that anyone with similar experience / a basic understanding of laboratory testing would have been quite skeptical of theranos fundamental claims right away. What I still don't get is how she duped so many investors without anyone with such knowledge speaking up in time to stop what happened.

[dyqik]

ok I'm confused, what was up with the super deep voice on Elizabeth Holmes? That just seemed weird. It wasn't always like that, was it? If it was, my apologies, I don't want to mock someone's natural condition, but that does not seem like the natural state of most women, and Holmes is not exactly typical of anything.

It's been reported that she lowered her voice (possibly with some vocal training) in order sound more authoratitive, just like Margaret Thatcher did. Personally I find her eyes weirder than her voice. In interviews or speeches she seems to open her eyes extra wide and barely blink.

She seems to have worked very hard at her image and persona. The simple black clothes and the slightly unkempt hair were also a conscious part of that, portraying an image of someone who didn't have the time or inclination to look perfect because there are more important things to attend to.

The underlying issue here is Silicon Valley/Venture Capital's really weird misogyny and highly parochial culture.

[Boustrophedon]

She will never do time. Her lawyers will sufficiently muddy the waters to sow enough reasonable doubt and much of the evidence in the form of data on the few trials they actually did simply went missing, when Theranos was "dismantled".

The investors have lost their money, they're never getting any of that back, there's none to get back.

She will never work in the industry again, I am not sure any benefit will accrue from the trial.

[Allo V Psycho]

She will never do time. Her lawyers will sufficiently muddy the waters to sow enough reasonable doubt and much of the evidence in the form of data on the few trials they actually did simply went missing, when Theranos was "dismantled".

The investors have lost their money, they're never getting any of that back, there's none to get back.

She will never work in the industry again, I am not sure any benefit will accrue from the trial.

Is the benefit as George Savile proposed: “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen" - in other words, that the operation of the law is a deterrent?

(I am not proposing that Holmes be hanged).

[tom p]

She will never do time. Her lawyers will sufficiently muddy the waters to sow enough reasonable doubt and much of the evidence in the form of data on the few trials they actually did simply went missing, when Theranos was "dismantled".

The investors have lost their money, they're never getting any of that back, there's none to get back.

She will never work in the industry again, I am not sure any benefit will accrue from the trial.

Is the benefit as George Savile proposed: “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen" - in other words, that the operation of the law is a deterrent?

(I am not proposing that Holmes be hanged).

But you do seem to be calling her a horse thief

[Bird on a Fire]

She will never do time. Her lawyers will sufficiently muddy the waters to sow enough reasonable doubt and much of the evidence in the form of data on the few trials they actually did simply went missing, when Theranos was "dismantled".

The investors have lost their money, they're never getting any of that back, there's none to get back.

She will never work in the industry again, I am not sure any benefit will accrue from the trial.

Is the benefit as George Savile proposed: “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen" - in other words, that the operation of the law is a deterrent?

(I am not proposing that Holmes be hanged).

But you do seem to be calling her a horse thief

And a man

[noggins]

well she is a thief, if you don't have sympathy for the investors, have some for the customers

[Boustrophedon]

I am tempted to think that she did not set out to defraud. I think she truly believed in her vision and that somewhere along the way, she failed to realise that the important part is the seemingly trivial little point of how the thing was supposed to actually work. At some point she pivoted from honest belief to fraud as she tried to rescue her company from failure.

She was working from the top down; start with the big vision, the hype, raise the finance and put the corporate structure in place and the little people will sort out the nitty gritty little details of getting the thing to work.

She modelled herself on Steve Jobs and Apple, but failed to realise that they went from the little details and built up to where Apple is now, not the other way around.

[cvb]

I am tempted to think that she did not set out to defraud. I think she truly believed in her vision and that somewhere along the way, she failed to realise that the important part is the seemingly trivial little point of how the thing was supposed to actually work. At some point she pivoted from honest belief to fraud as she tried to rescue her company from failure.

She was working from the top down; start with the big vision, the hype, raise the finance and put the corporate structure in place and the little people will sort out the nitty gritty little details of getting the thing to work.

She modelled herself on Steve Jobs and Apple, but failed to realise that they went from the little details and built up to where Apple is now, not the other way around.

I think she truly believed this particular sector could be disrupted and she went from there. She then fraudulently made claims about her technology, which was largely non existent, and sold these tests to actual people. She deserves to do time but it will not happen.

edit for spelling

[Boustrophedon]

I think I may have had my mind changed by wiki.

Her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that later went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal.

One could be excused for thinking that corporate fraud was in her blood?

[noggins]

An simple grifter would have cashed out earlier. A fool in too deep would have cracked up by now. No, I think she is one of those self-deceiving bonkers psycopath bullshitters*, like L Ron Hubbard, or [alive people who can sue] They aren't liars - a liar knows the truth - reality is whatever their ego demands in the moment.


(*please enlighten me with the correct term)

[basementer]

I think I may have had my mind changed by wiki.

Her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that later went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal.

One could be excused for thinking that corporate fraud was in her blood?

I have a brilliant idea for screening for corporate fraud using a simple pinprick test.

[monkey]

An simple grifter would have cashed out earlier. A fool in too deep would have cracked up by now. No, I think she is one of those self-deceiving bonkers psycopath bullshitters*, like L Ron Hubbard, or [alive people who can sue] They aren't liars - a liar knows the truth - reality is whatever their ego demands in the moment.


(*please enlighten me with the correct term)

She seemed to follow the Sillicon Valley start up myth like paint by numbers, as if that was the important bit, rather than the product (much like Boustrophedon was suggesting). But I'm not sure if you can tell if she was doing this to intentionally deceive people, or whether she actually believed that this was how you did things. Deciding between the two from your computer is just speculation. We might get more information.

But either way it would have come to a point where she knew that she couldn't do what it said on the tin and had to start intentionally deceiving people. Whether or not this was illegal is for the court to decide, but I think it's pretty obvious there was grifting/deception involved at some point, no matter how she got to that point.

[monkey]

I think I may have had my mind changed by wiki.

Her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that later went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal.

One could be excused for thinking that corporate fraud was in her blood?

I have a brilliant idea for screening for corporate fraud using a simple pinprick test.

Why not just test for pricks?

[Sciolus]

Why not just test for pricks?

For most serious crimes, that has around 90% sensitivity (but would have missed Holmes), but rather poor specificity.

[jdc]

An simple grifter would have cashed out earlier. A fool in too deep would have cracked up by now. No, I think she is one of those self-deceiving bonkers psycopath bullshitters*, like L Ron Hubbard, or [alive people who can sue] They aren't liars - a liar knows the truth - reality is whatever their ego demands in the moment.


(*please enlighten me with the correct term)

I think you have it - 'self-deceiving bullshitters' is correct. See e.g. discussion of self-deception and b.llsh.t in the below paper:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1 ... 7720929704

As well as enhancing one’s image, bullshitting can also help to enhance self-identity. This is because b.llsh.t can enable bullshitters to conjure a kind of ‘self-confidence trick’. This happens when bullshitters mislead themselves into believing their own b.llsh.t. ...

The self-confidence which comes from self-deception can aid resource acquisition. For instance, entrepreneurs are encouraged to ignore their objective chances of failure so they can appear self-confident in their search for resources to support their venture. This self-confidence can make it easier to acquire the resources an entrepreneur needs, but it can also lead to delusional and potentially destructive behaviours