I’ve been following the Theranos story. From the first I heard about their objective to do hundreds of analyses from less than a cc of blood, I was doubtful. There are basic and fundamental reasons that more blood might be required for an analysis. Many analyses are to find extremely small quantities of hard to distinguish molecules. Those two qualities together mean that you need a large quantity of the medium in which you are trying to find them – in this case, blood.
Theranos would have had to find a new way to do those hundreds of analyses, which rely on different chemistries, so there would be many new ways they needed to find. Laser enthusiasts at one time believed that they could do this spectrally, which has the feel of initial plausibility, but many unsuccessful attempts have convinced them otherwise. And Theranos wasn’t talking about lasers.
They weren’t talking about any specifics, which was also suspicious. Those alternative analysis methods would require big scientific advances, which would be worth publicizing. Those advances would have to be built on available science, which Theranos wasn’t talking about either.
John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal did the digging while other reporters had stars in their eyes over Elizabeth Holmes’s Steve Jobs imitation. Now he has a book out that sounds very worth reading. I am contemplating adding it to my pile of books to read.
It’s quite a story, about which I still have questions. How did Holmes flummox national security experts like George Schultz and James Mattis into being on her board? Why national security types rather than health experts? Was she consciously lying or deluded?
It’s a story of Silicon Valley overreach by many people.
And open thread!
NotMax
Pets.com wasn’t an anomaly, it was an object lesson.
kindness
We are ‘blessed’ by carnival barkers, hucksters and scam artists in this era. I hope it isn’t something in the water. It’s bad enough we know it is in our internet.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: I’d forgotten about Pets.com as well as what led to their demise, but was that a con also?
Cheryl, do you think Theranos was a con from the beginning? Or did it just turn into one?
Mathguy
@NotMax: Damn, you beat me to pets.com. Great commercials, though.
Another Scott
Too many people are greedy for monopoly rents. Earning 5-20% annual returns in a new business isn’t enough for them, so they chase after some hyped up magic beans:
TANSTAAFL.
There probably is some way to figure out how to do blood tests much more efficiently. But, as you say, we’re not there yet. And people who should have known better let the dollar signs blind them.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mathguy
@kindness: I think that every era is like this. It’s just that they have a much larger platform from which to work their scam, rather than being localized.
dmsilev
There were so many red flags there. I think my favorite was Walgreens committing to a partnership with Theranos without doing any sort of due diligence on whether their technology actually existed.
Joel
I’m a biochemist by training. Research is hard. Developing products is hard. Even translating established research from the basic to practical level is fraught with risk. Failure isn’t just likely, it’s practically inevitable. So, someone promising a product based on technology that hasn’t been shown to to exist even on a basic level, well that’s a scam. There’s already enough questionable products in the biotech industry to begin with. What Theranos promised, though, wow.
HAL
Walker
@dmsilev:
Actually, Walgreen’s lab consultant told the CEO it was probably a scam. The CEO responded that they could not afford to take the chance and miss out.
Cheryl Rofer
@opiejeanne:
That is what I would like to know. Holmes was a 19-year-old college dropout when she started the company because she hated having blood drawn. Which fed the Silicon Valley myth mill. But she didn’t have the background to develop an alternative.
I think there’s a great story waiting to be told about her progress from wishful thinking to full con. And, of course, the privilege of a rich blonde young woman is part of it.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Why did anyone believe her without solid evidence and repeatable results? She was a 19 year old college drop out, and apparently a con-woman on a par with P.T. Barnum. It’s not the business end of this that makes me so mad, it’s that her company was selling this testing to places like Walgreens and people were getting incorrect results. Incorrect results can kill people.
Roger Moore
My impression is it was a scam for a long time, and the choice of national security types rather than health experts was part of the scam. They were supposedly targeting the national security market because their technology was the kind of beyond-cutting-edge technology the military is willing to pay big money for, and DOD was one of their early targets. In practice that was great for the scam, because national security types have way more credibility than they deserve in areas outside their actual expertise. Once you have a bunch of serious people like Mattis and Schultz on board, they can help sell your idea to everyone else.
My big question is how long it was a scam. Did Holmes start out thinking it was possible and only turn it into a full-on scam when it was obvious the technology wasn’t working, or did she never really have the technology and do the whole thing as a scam from the start?
Enzymer
Like you I’ve always been suspicious of Theranos, but a little more hopeful initially, based on my experience with HPLC/MS/MS technology. We could get good metabolic profiles with 0.5 g tissue or less. Those seemed to be promising diagnostically. But the continued secrecy around the technology really raised suspicions. There aren’t that many techniques fundamentally with the requisite sensitivity.
Mai naem mobile
IIRC Elizabeth Holmes’ family was well connected politically and that’s how they managed to get these big politicos on their board. Also, I think Kissinger was on the board as well. Not everybody got suckered. The Google investment arm didn’t buy the ‘we can’t tell you how this works because it’s auper sekret proprietary information.’
Cheryl Rofer
@Enzymer: I’m not fully up to speed on the various chromatographic – MS technologies, which was one reason why I wasn’t more vocal about Theranos from the start. I figured it was possible I missed something there.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That none of her investors listed by the article were medical pretty much says scam from the get go and anyone who know something about the topic suspected that.
Ian G.
@NotMax:
Pets.com may have lost some suckers money, what it didn’t do is risk the lives of ordinary people going to Walgreens for a blood test who got faulty information. Holmes needs to go to prison for this.
Bobby Thomson
@Walker: not at all atypical, and why I have to laugh at the line that you have to shovel money out the door to get the best people.
Enzymer
@Cheryl Rofer: The hard thing is distinguishing between closely related proteins, for example different phosphorylation states. It can be done, but reliably enough for clinical work… probably need multiple samples per patient.
Al Z.
@Mathguy:
For me to Poop On!
Joel
@Enzymer: I think people were somewhat enthralled with the miracle of genomics, which really do have a low theoretical limit to the amount of required material. However, that’s apples and oranges compared to metabolomics.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@kindness:
a combination of technology is so complex now only specialists know what is going on and elite that indulges in anti-intellectualism as a show of power so they are ripe for the scamming.
dr. bloor
See also: Cole’s tweet link yesterday to the story of Anna Delvey. When someone offers you a chance at easy money, prestige, or connections, the thought “too good to be true” is frequently the first victim.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, they were counting on that. My assumption when I first heard about Theranos was that they were doing something nifty with HPLC/MS–but I’ve worked in IT so long that I’m no longer sure how to spell that properly.
MattF
Here’s the results page for a ‘Theranos’ search on Derek Lowe’s medicinal chemistry page. Lowe is my go-to guy for chemistry in general and medicinal chemistry in particular.
Roger Moore
@Enzymer:
The bigger issue is that the sample processing needs to be very reproducible, and getting it done fast and reproducibly is hard. Once you have that done, you just need isotopically labeled standards, which aren’t necessarily hard but are expensive to produce.
different-church-lady
People are stupid.
All of them.
NotMax
Tech produces more bubbles than the stage of the Lawrence Welk show.
khead
It was an affinity scam from the beginning.
acallidryas
I read an excerpt from Carreyou’s book, and he seems to to suggest this–that she was 19 and thought she could do all this stuff with no background, and others thought so to, so, hey, maybe this will eventually work. Because why would you need experts, right?
But when looking at how they spoke with investors and other health professionals, and the way they treated anyone looking into it, it’s obvious it turned into a scam pretty quickly. And of course, while it might be excusable for an entitled, egotistical 19 year old kid to think they can do something like that based on just they’re wanting to, it is amazing that so many other people and investors were suckered into it, and so many high-profile security experts just decided to believe.
Enzymer
@Roger Moore: Precisely (wink)
B.B.A.
I think Theranos is a great step forward for feminism. It used to be an exclusive boys’ club of techbros getting rich off vague promises and nonexistent products, but Holmes has shown a techsis can run that kind of scam just as well as any techbro can. Slay queen, break that glass ceiling! /s
donnah
CBS did a follow-up on their Theranos story on 60 Minutes recently, featuring several employees who became whistle blowers. Holmes is a very convincing actress and persuaded more than a few well-heeled executives to fund her work. It was an interesting episode and one odd little item was her speaking voice. As we watched, my husband said, “What is the matter with her voice? It sounds so weird!” Later in the show, someone who knew her said she faked a deeper voice for some reason, and shortly after one of her interviews, reverted back to her higher-pitched natural voice.
She seemed to be very intent on creating her own Steve Jobs story, even wearing black turtleneck sweaters. Odd what lengths money-hungry publicity hounds will do.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: Help… help… turn off de bubbles…
Jack the Second
1. Programmers (and engineers in general) think they can start from scratch in any field and revolutionize it. That they think this because so much software is total crap never seems to occur to them.
2. Real investments are slow. One reason Buffett is so rich is that he has been winning for something like 80 goddamn years. No one wants slow investments.
3. Experts in one domain are frequently easier to sucker in another domain. This goes double for people who are good leaders in one domain.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
I tend to think Theranos was a scam from the get-go. The article suggests Holmes and Balwani half-believed their own bullshit but I doubt that. I remember thinking, the first time I read about it, that its claims sounded just a little too good to be true. For scientists, proving what you assert is fundamental to your credibility. Their refusal to explain the science behind the testing to anyone, even their own staff, suggests there never was any there there.
It’s an old trick: show the mark a black box, and tell him that if he opens it the magic will escape and never come back. They were careful not to engage with experts who could have debunked their claims. They got eminent people to suspend judgement and lend credibility to the scam by appealing to their greed. They threatened and spied on people they figured were close to figurng out the scam. It was a fraud all the way.
father pusbucket
It seems she is a genuine genius; what caused her to go to the dark side?
opiejeanne
I’m sitting in reception, waiting for the nurse to come get me for my cataract surgery. The receptionist wanted to charge us $900 but when I challenged this she was happy to take the agreed on $500. I’m a bit suspicious that we’ll get a bill later on.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: And, my guess is that the fraud continues in any way that Holmes can push it.
People really need to be more aware of con games and con artists. I’d recommend (re-)reading ‘The Confidence Man’ by Melville.
p.a.
Well there’s the, IIRC what Barry Ritholtz calls, wetworks issue: humans tend to double down rather than admit being duped. There’s also the Dunning-Kruger Corollary (Dumbledore): while smart people are… smart, their mistakes will therefore tend to be big mistakes.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Sweet! I was wondering when Marvel would announce the name of the next Avengers mov… oh. My mistake.
MattF
@opiejeanne: Good luck.
germy
Speaking of cons…
Zack Snyder is directing a new version of “The Fountainhead” and the responses have been amusing.
LAO
Hey, so I haven’t been around much. Did I miss a discussion on yesterday’s Trump-Sessions NYT story? I think this is a big deal — I’m actually cautiously optimistic that the Mueller report will layout an obstruction of justice charge. Although still not optimistic that Trump will be charged with obstruction of justice,
NotMax
Perhaps she can seamlessly transfer to cold fusion.
MattF
@LAO: Well, Nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator– so I could anticipate something similar for Trump.
opiejeanne
@MattF: Thanks. The annoyance of the bill is a welcome distraction. ?
germy
@NotMax: Or supply-side economics.
Barbara
@acallidryas:
Yes, I think this is right. It was intended to be a “fake it until you make it” kind of enterprise. For most of the time the scam was in operation, there were honest to God scientists trying to fulfill her vision, but it was obvious to them that her claims to the public and to investors were essentially false based on the status of their own efforts. She used NDAs to keep everyone on a leash. The problem is that in the area of health care, and especially in an area where people expect objective results, i.e, laboratory tests, you can’t “fake it” without risking harm to a lot of people. it’s one thing to thumb your nose at taxi cab regulators. It’s another thing to ignore clinical laboratory quality and accuracy regulations. Eventually regulators acted and found that the laboratory was not performing up to standards, and this was a normal laboratory taking a normal amount of blood. Theranos never offered a finished product based on taking much less blood.
MattF
@opiejeanne: I recall that pre-op, the nurse drew a big red circle around the eye to be operated on. Which was actually comforting.
The Moar You Know
She is young and cute and can talk a great line of shit. She certainly isn’t the first possessing those attributes to rook some old, powerful men into helping her run a scam and she damn sure won’t be the last.
ETA: are some of you suggesting that at some point she thought this would actually work? Please.
Paul M Gottlieb
“How did Holmes flummox national security experts like George Schultz” If this is the same George Schultz who was Dean of The University of Chicago Business School and later served in the Reagan and Bush cabinets, he’s close to 100 years old! How tough could it be to fool him? As far as I can tell, for the last 10 years he has affixed his name to everything right wingers have stuck in front of him.
LAO
@MattF: And, apparently he’s still tweeting about firing Sessions today. >Sigh<
MattF
@Paul M Gottlieb: Conclusion: Do not bother to rate the prestige of the Board of Directors.
Amir Khalid
@father pusbucket:
She and her boyfriend Sunny Balwani kept a near-billion-dollar scam going for a decade until someone wised up to them. It’s an impressive accomplishment for a pair of crooks, but to me it’s no mark of genius.
khead
This is the story in a nutshell here. It iS true that nowadays you can do a lot of different tests in a microfluidic device…. but there are only so many parts (electrodes, optics, etc.) that can be placed on the microfluidic chip and you need more than a drop of blood to do the tests. Also, if she wanted to be legit, she could’ve raised the money to straight up buy Caliper Life Sciences or Illumina back in 2003.
Cthulhu
In theory, Theranos was developing a single machine to do these assays. They did manage to make one that could do a small percentage of what they were promising (though I recall reading that even this device was not particularly novel and cribbed previous tech). Then they started selling their services and they were certainly defrauding people as this point because they had to use other brands of equipment to get many of the results. I do think some of the employees who knew may have justified it to themselves in that they were biding time to continue to advance the Theranos device but clearly management was fine as long as funding and accolades kept flowing. They were basically selling vaporware.
Mart
What is the problem? My Theranos keeps my coffee warm all day.
Also too, we got a confidence man running the country…
rikyrah
Russian Facebook ads inflamed Hispanic tensions over immigration after Trump election
Jessica Guynn,
USA TODAY Published 5:00 a.m. ET May 25, 2018 |
SAN FRANCISCO — In the months after Donald Trump rode to victory while calling for mass deportations, Russian operatives bought dozens of Facebook ads targeted at the Hispanic community seeking to further inflame tensions already roiled by the campaign’s racially charged rhetoric, according to USA TODAY analysis.
Thousands of ads released by House Democrats this month showed Russian operatives focused on race during the presidential election in what experts say was a clear effort to amplify existing divisions.
They didn’t stop there. In the first half of 2017, as Trump aggressively moved to restrict immigration, fake Facebook pages set up by a Russian propaganda operation started pushing ads on both sides of the immigration debate.
Tokyokie
I hadn’t heard of this scam until today. But the next time you get blood drawn, look at the kit the phlebotomist/nurse is carrying. It’s filled with test tubes with different-colored tops. Each of those different colors indicates the tube contains a different reactant (or no reactant at all) to permit testing for something different. Sure, each of those tests could probably be performed with less blood and less reactant, but splitting 1 mL of blood into 10 separate parts to place with 10 different reactants? Doesn’t sound feasible to me. But then, I’m not a former national security official.
Elizabelle
Youtube: a medley of pets.com commercials
“Because pets can’t drive.” It’s actually a good slogan. Sounds like pets.com was ahead of its time, perhaps. Too bad such a good name is taken, now.
MattF
@rikyrah: The Russians clearly think that spreading confusion benefits Trump.
Gin & Tonic
@MattF: That double-checking can be funny. When I went in for surgery last year, two different people came by in prep to verify which arm, and they marked it with a bold marker. It was the arm with the cast on it, and the first step in the OR would have been to cut the cast off, but they marked the cast anyway. I mean, duh, you’re not going to cut open the other arm and leave the one in the cast alone, right?
Gin & Tonic
@Paul M Gottlieb: One and the same. But lay off, he’s only a sprightly 97.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: They should have used a post-it note. Big arrow and “DO THIS ONE”.
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
It’ll be fine. My brother is an ophthalmologist, the king of no-stitch cataract operations, and he says it really is a routine procedure. But people freak out (understandably!) because it’s their eye!
You will be really pleased with the results afterwards.
MomSense
@kindness:
I remember a Wall St big shot I used to know explaining derivatives to me. He was so frustrated and finally condescending because I kept asking him questions which pointed to what a BS scheme they are. He just wanted to write me off as a simpleton who didn’t understand finance. I keep hoping I’ll run into him one summer and be able to flash him my active bitch face but I think he summers elsewhere now.
Mike G
Wired has an excerpt from Carreyrou’s book —
https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-look-inside-theranos-dysfunctional-corporate-culture/
How did Holmes flummox national security experts like George Schultz and James Mattis into being on her board?
Big paychecks. I suspect these guys are less diligent than we might pretend they are in taking high-paying gigs. They are selling their ‘names’ and not much else since they have no relevant experience in the field. It makes them less likely to ask probing questions and easier to manipulate.
Barbara
@MomSense: There are companies that use derivatives for legitimate purposes, hedging strategies, for instance, but for the most part, derivatives are the equivalent of legalized gambling.
MomSense
@LAO:
I think they will get him for being the person who drafted the press response to the trump tower meeting as being about adoptions. Didn’t he also admit to firing Comey to stop the Russia investigation in an interview with Lester Holt?
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Remember the story of the guy who woke up after the operation, and found the doctors had cut off his good leg? Mark my words, that story is going to happen again someday. And the patient will wake up to find, written on his remaining limb, once in blue Sharpie and again in red Sharpie: “Cut THIS leg”.
MomSense
@Barbara:
Exactly.
HAL
We are living in bizarre times.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense:The problem with derivatives and exotic instruments was that they behave well most of the time (like your Wall Street dude was explaining) but some of the assumptions behind their valuation are based on assumptions that are no longer valid during a systemic collapse, like the one we saw in 2008.
rikyrah
BREAKING: Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, who was reported killed in Kiev, shows up at a news conference in Ukraine.
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 30, 2018
LAO
@MomSense: I think that you are right — all of his actions bundled together — making a compelling case for obstruction.
How are you feeling?
MomSense
@opiejeanne:
Sending my best to you! Hoping for a successful surgery.
rikyrah
The number of migrant children in custody has surged in the wake of the new Trump/Sessions border crackdown.
HHS is now holding more than 10,000 of them:https://t.co/dXqDYEnAeB
The whole point of the policy is that it’s supposed to be awful, so it functions as a deterrent: https://t.co/Ter9LSOHhr
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 30, 2018
MomSense
@LAO:
A little better today. I slept for 12 hours! I’m on a toddler’s sleep schedule.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: All derivatives are not created equal. Put and call options on stocks for example that are traded on Chicago Board of Options Exchange, are different from currency options banks underwrite and trade with each other. Derivatives is a catchall term for financial instruments whose value depends on some underlying asset such as stocks or currency, or mortgages.
LAO
@MomSense: As long as you don’t wake up every few hours crying, I’d say that’s probably for the best.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: The SBU says it was a sting to catch the hired killer(s). Some people are saying this was brilliant, others are saying it was boneheaded. Even his wife didn’t know, so he publicly apologized to her. Man, that must have been weird.
Barbara
@HAL: Blaming Ambien for the content of your tweets is a little like blaming alcohol when you assault someone. Besides, Roseanne had made almost exactly the same tweet five years ago targeted at Susan Rice.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: Right, and they are used as hedging strategies by a lot of companies, especially those whose costs and profits are tied to specific kinds of commodities, for instance, airlines and jet fuel or petroleum more generally, or Kraft Foods and the price of corn and wheat. But when a derivative becomes nothing more than a bet on the direction of the market, without any ownership interest in an underlying asset, it starts to veer ever closer to a pure bet that doesn’t really look too much different from betting on the outcome of a sporting contest.
rikyrah
@opiejeanne:
Sending you positive thoughts that all goes well.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Options and futures traded on CBOE and CBOT work quite well though, its the off-exchange private party options that are problematic because of the lack of transparency.
Tokyokie
@Amir Khalid: A few years ago, the Centers for Disease Control made wrong site operations a focal point, meaning that the healthcare facility accrediting agencies would withhold approval if measures such as drawing on body parts (CUT HERE! –>) and timeouts before the surgery gets under way were not instituted. Those sorts of things are standard hospital procedure now.
rikyrah
THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O’DONNELL 5/29/18
Report: Sessions key witness in Mueller obstruction probe
The New York Times reports that Trump berated Jeff Sessions and tried to get him to reverse Sessions’ recusal on the Russia probe. Mueller is now investigating the incident. And Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says they are preparing for the possibility of impeachment. Lawrence discusses with John Heilemann, Harry Litman, and Jason Johnson.
Tom Levenson
@MomSense: I’m writing about derivatives right now (they got started in the late 17th century w. call and put options). Derivatives can be enormously useful. The emphasis being on the “can”. The can also be a recipe for disaster, generally in predictable and in broadly similar ways. By predictable, here, I don’t mean it’s possible to say exactly when a 2008 style meltdown will occur, just that given certain conditions, such a disaster is very likely to happen. Which is why regulation is an inherently necessary aspect of a functional financial market.
Lapassionara
I’ve read a few tweets that claim Trump disclosed secret information to donors ar a fundraiser just recently. Does anyone know anything about that?
smintheus
Too good to be true almost always comes out not to be true. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. That plus the fact that Elizabeth Holmes has mad staring eyes. Yes of course she knew she was lying.
Tom Levenson
@Mike G: A while back Buffett spent some part of his annual letter railing on the dangers of “professional” directors — folks for whom directors’ pay and access to stock made up a large part of their living. Just checked an estimate — total director compensation (retainer, meeting fees, etc.) — runs in the mid $30K in one survey of companies. For some people, especially those who serve on several boards because of specific expertise or connections, that adds up in a hurry to a very competent living (if nothing like TechBro avarice). Directors for whom that’s true have a real incentive not to shake up things too much, lest that iron rice bowl crack.
DCrefugee
Just popping in, so if someone else pointed this out, my bad:
Is my new favorite phrase. Should be in rotation…
Popping out now…
NotMax
@Lapassionara
“Stormy Daniels is a lousy lay.”
:)
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
That’s why, when I have my knee surgery this fall, I will probably repeat what I did last time — not just writing “this one” or whatever they now ask on the one that needs to be operated on, but writing “NOT THIS ONE” on my other knee.
Mnemosyne
On topic, I remember reading the New Yorker article on Theranos and thinking, This doesn’t make any sense. I guess I’m glad to know that I’m smarter than the New Yorker. So much for their vaunted fact checking.
rikyrah
Trump falsely blames Democrats for his own immigration agenda
05/29/18 08:00 AM—UPDATED 05/29/18 10:01 AM
By Steve Benen
The stories are gut-wrenching. Hundreds of immigrants, many of them legally seeking asylum, are reaching the U.S. border, only to have American officials take their young children away. In some cases, literal toddlers have been forcibly removed from the arms of their parents.
The outrage and public condemnations of these practices has left Donald Trump with a choice. He can defend his administration’s policy; he can pretend the policy doesn’t exist; or he can try to blame others for what he’s done. In this case, the Republican president has decided to look behind Door #3, as evidenced by this tweet over the holiday weekend.
Much of this is gibberish, but the part of this that matters was the president’s insistence that Democrats approved a “horrible law” that requires him to separate children from parents.
Trump is clearly lying. There is no such law. As NBC News reported the other day, there’s a 2008 law “requiring children traveling alone at the border to be released in the ‘least restrictive setting’ while their cases are processed,” but it doesn’t require Trump to separate children from their parents, and it was a bipartisan measure signed by George W. Bush.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: It’s pretty unlikely, the kid’s an OR nurse, they put notices on the body part and the nurse double checks the surgeon. Will it happen in isolated incidents, maybe.
NotMax
@Tom Levenson
Reminiscent of the big blow-up about the Bishop Estate in Hawaii when it came out that the directors were essentially sitting on the okoles while each raking in close to a cool million per year.
NotMax
@NotMax
Ugh.
sitting on their okoles
mtraven
@NotMax: Pets.com really has no similarity to Theranos. They did not have a product that didn’t work, they were not committing massive fraud, they just mismanaged their finances and the money ran out. Entirely different story.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Good move. Keep the rubes riled up over something that literally cannot happen.
When Giuliani is the most competent lawyer on your team, you have a huge problem. And Giuliani is, head and shoulders above the rest, the most competent lawyer working for Trump.
Not saying much, is it?
NotMax
@mtraven
Both overpromised and underdelivered.
Snarki, child of Loki
writing “NOT THIS ONE” on my other knee.
Make sure that the “NOT” can’t be wiped away with rubbing alcohol.
trollhattan
@Walker:
Oooh ouch, the most damning condemnation of that certain corporate mentality I can imagine. “We can’t afford not to take this gigantic risk, what if our competitors beat us to it?”
What an actual shrewd and loyal manager would think–“Not only do I not want to risk my company’s health and reputation, it will be doubly great if our biggest competitor falls for this trap,”
Pity.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
I remember that article! It was my introduction to Holmes.
The author didn’t seem to understand the science; it was more of an apple polishing “look at this fascinating young lady and her brilliant idea” profile that some newyorker writers specialize in.
rikyrah
Why can’t Trump tell the truth about military pay?
05/29/18 09:22 AM—UPDATED 05/29/18 09:34 AM
By Steve Benen
………………………………………………
If this sounds familiar, it’s because this wasn’t the first time Trump made this claim. A few weeks ago, the president delivered remarks at a Celebration of Military Mothers and Spouses Event in the White House at which he twice boasted with pride about approving the first military raises “in 10 years.”
All of which leads to an awkward question: what kind of president lies to servicemen and women about their pay?
First, the basic elements of reality are in dispute. As we discussed the last time Trump made this claim, there were raises for our military in 2017. And 2016. And 2015 and 2014. And every other year of the Obama era. And every year of the Bush era. And every year of the Clinton era.
In fact, the military has gotten a raise practically every year since the end of World War II. It’s the sort of detail a competent Commander in Chief should probably be aware of.
Second, while Trump said on Friday that he secured “a big pay increase” for servicemen and women, but in inflation-adjusted terms, the raise was actually quite modest.
Third, Trump’s description of the politics – he said the raise was “the hardest one to get” – is a fairy tale. There was no organized opposition pushing back against pay increases for the military.
NotMax
@The Moar You Know
That would be Emmett Flood, who is savvy enough to stay below the radar. Whether he hangs on as it dawns on him with whom and into what quagmire he’s entered is an open question.
rikyrah
Mercedes Schlapp called Kelly Sadler a “bitch” in the White House, two sources say https://t.co/QzMv2vgcO5
— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) May 30, 2018
Trump aide lashes out at ‘b*tch’ staffer as leaks continue to cause chaos in the White House: report https://t.co/d79iudGuq1
— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 30, 2018
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
When I had my carpel tunnel surgery last fall it didn’t matter which wrist was which since I was having both done, but they scribbled stuff on me anyway. I don’t remember what or why, because drugs.
NotMax
@Snarki, child of Loki
Also that the surgeon’s named isn’t Dr. Not.
;)
Gelfling 545
@MomSense: Get all the sleep you can. It is importsnt for healing. A month after some surgery, I still need an afternoon nap. I’m trying not to fight it. Give your body what it’s requesting.
rikyrah
China awards Ivanka Trump’s company several new trademarks
05/29/18 10:08 AM—UPDATED 05/29/18 10:18 AM
By Steve Benen
…………………………
Before the president’s supporters shrug their shoulders, they may want to consider how they’d react if a President Hillary Clinton were engaged in trade talks with China, while at the same time, Chelsea Clinton’s private business were receiving valuable trademarks from officials in Beijing.
How many hearings do you suppose a Republican-led Congress would hold on the subject?
An Associated Press report from last year continues to ring true
hitless
I look forward to the rehabilitation of Ms. Holmes in about 5 years, in which we get fawning press stories of how her last venture made mistakes but was so close to delivering the promised technology until government regulators got in the way.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Wasn’t she assigned leaver du jour at the WHCD? (Mother wouldn’t allow Pence to go) Working for Trump sure is a complex job.
Gelfling 545
@Barbara: Didn’t she say yesterday that ot was just a bad joke? She’s quite Trumpian in trying to excuse herself from responsibility.
MattF
@Barbara: Ah. ‘Got away with it before’ is actually a plausible explanation.
Kelly
Last night we received emergency alerts on our cell phones to stop drinking municipal water. Algae toxin was discovered in the North Santiam river by the Salem, Oregon water system. Our little system is one of several that also draw from the N Santiam. Fortunately my brother who gets their water from a well lives a few miles so I have a safe source. The water is safe for bathing and washing dishes. The toxic algae bloom is in Detroit reservoir and nobody can predict how long the problem will last.
rikyrah
I will repeat:
All Democrats need to have the attitude of either:
Ted Lieu
or
Maxine Waters
No no no, #ConManDon. No matter what you wish, your lawyers Emmett Flood and Rudy Guiliani cannot be included in the classified briefings, and neither can your friends Kanye West and Roseanne Barr.
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) May 30, 2018
SiubhanDuinne
@Lapassionara:
Probably this, as reported by Politico (Wonkette mentioned it in their morning briefing):
Terry chay
I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley for the last 18 years. Theranos is derivative. I’ll wait for the made for tv version of Tesla.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I thought it was his wife who found him bleeding out in a stairwell. How’d they work that?
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle:
They did have very catchy advertising. Today they’d be competing with Amazon, which sell a kajillion other things too for better economies of scale. Hypothetically they could have expanded to a mass market online retailer but their killer problem was that their main product, pet food, is relatively heavy and expensive to ship. Books were a much better start for online retail – pricey for the weight, and extremely varied so the online retailer can provide much better choices.
So, pretty much doomed from the start, whenever the start was. At least we got the cute sock mascot.
grumpy realist
@MomSense: I remember when I was looking into buying a place and my bank got all excited about the possibility of my getting a ARM loan.
I listened to their explanation and decided that if I, with a Ph.D. in physics, couldn’t understand their explanation of how an ARM worked, there was no way I was going to sign up for it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A fight between Theranos and Iron Man would be totally awesome.
chopper
@Gelfling 545:
spelling, too.
PST
@mtraven: I totally agree about Pets.com, which was based on a reasonable premise and not fraud. There is not a great deal of difference between it and Chewy.com, which did well and was purchased for billions by Petsmart. Chewy had less advertising and less charisma but better management, good customer service, and more propitious timing. I sure don’t miss lugging home 35 pound bags of dog food!
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t know. I’ll have to see what I can find on the facts.
grumpy realist
@schrodingers_cat: Somewhere in the back part of my mind I remember the factoid that Japanese temples got into weather derivatives, since so much of their income is made by donations of people visiting them on festival days. Horrid weather, fewer people show up, not so much income.
MattF
@grumpy realist: Had a similar experience with a “stable value” fund. “Portfolio of annuities” sort of made sense, but beyond that it was completely opaque.
artem1s
@kindness:
Paraphrasing Christ “The grifters will be with us always”. TV and now the internet has just made it easier for them to reach millions at a time. Slipping Jimmy would have ended up scamming people with Ponzi schemes on the internet if he hadn’t passed the bar. As it was he attracted plenty of <strike<marks clients with his cheesy TV ads.
Jamey
This one was easy to figure out from day one. It’s straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel: “She was a leggy blond who could turn heads and cook a spreadsheet…”
beused
@Another Scott:
#1, 2 & 3 are the republican policy scams used on their supporters for decades.
bluefoot
I’m a scientist, and when I first heard of Theranos was obvious to anyone with some familiarity of assay development, biochemistry or chemistry that this was a sham. Either that or Theranos had some truly Star Trek-level technology. It’s just not possible to reliably quantify (not just detect, but quantify) certain analytes in those small quantities of whole blood. There was a LOT of skepticism about Theranos in the scientific/biotech community, but for whatever reason, little of the skepticism made it into the press – and not for lack of trying.
IMO, Holmes is a LOT more evil than Shkreli. Shkreli was screwing people for cash, but Holmes was screwing people for cash AND was planning on using fraudulent clinical tests that doctors and patients would use to make health and treatment decisions. It could easily have led to many deaths, assuming Theranos could have got by the FDA and had their assays and device approved. (Though FDA approval wouldn’t have been at all likely from what I’ve read about the state of Theranos’ technology. They were YEARS away from proof-of-concept, much less a clinical test that could be used.) Holmes should be in jail for a very, very long time.
Origuy
@Mnemosyne: I was thinking about doing that; I have arthroscopic surgery on my right knee on Friday. Although my left knee probably needs it too. I didn’t have that one MRI’ed though. I hurt it years ago.
Just One More Canuck
@LAO: @MomSense: or needing your diaper changed
LAO
@Just One More Canuck: excellent point.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Mnemosyne: just adding a “not” to whatever they write is a bad idea. To easy to get covered up or mistaken. If you must have them write “malpractice sult” on the good side.
Damned at Random
@dr. bloor: Too many of our leaders haven’t take a science class since freshman year in college. Throw around a few buzzwords and they are all in. I had enough college chemistry/biochemistry to see this as a con when it was presented on 60 Minutes. I’m not surprised that Theranos was able to scam a lot of money from people with minimal knowledge of laboratory medicine – we are all looking for the next big thing – but I am shocked that Walgreens partnered with them.
EthylEster
@Cheryl Rofer: Microarray technology uses very small samples. And 10 microliter sample injections for GC/MS are routine. So I didn’t find the small analysis volumes a red flag. But otherwise the marketing language and overall hand-waving put me off. It just didn’t sound like a legit business opportunity. And investors who essentially reason like that moron Cheney (“Even if there’s just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable…”) are asking to fail. It sounds like Walgreens might be in that club.
Too good to be true is a thing, ya know.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Highly unlikely, yes. But is it impossible? Murphy’s Law, alas, has a way of getting lucky and penetrating any number of safeguards.
PJ
There was no “flummoxing” going on with the board members – they were selected precisely because they had no expertise but carried an air of legitimacy.
Some companies hire board members in order to provide a check on management (they in fact have a fiduciary duty to the company). But with many (most?) companies, as board members are selected by management, the board is intended to rubber stamp whatever management puts in front of them. Other reasons for selecting particular board members are the prestige they bring the company (to reassure shareholders, regulators, and journalists), and the political and business connections they bring to assist with getting favorable regulatory action and in facilitating business deals. For a company like Theranos, hiring national security “experts” for the board made tremendous sense, as it would give them an air of legitimacy that journalists and citizens are trained not to question (because the military is holy and beyond question in our society), and they would also no nothing about the science or the business, and thus, even if they were inclined to question management, could be more easily bamboozled.
EthylEster
@Jack the Second:
Kevin Drum posted yesterday about how any data can be fitted perfectly using “this weird little trick”. Then there is language about how this overfitting can affect AI. Well, duh. Perfectly good software and statistical and scientific ideas can be misused. Humans remain gullible even as their potential to harm themselves and others continues to increase.
VeniceRiley
@Kelly: I just read an article somewhere that global warming is to blame for worsening the severity and length of algae blooms in the great lakes.
On the Tharanos subject … I’ve always been of the opinion that boardroom seats in general are accepted by way too many entitled and connected people who just want to collect fancy stipends & travel, and to feel important and accomplished. A few board seats and you’re talking real money.
catclub
@Barbara:
derivatives can be used to try to hide or transfer risk. They cannot actually make risk disappear. But it is tempting to describe them that way.
also in terms of gambling, if you do not know what risk you are holding when you buy or sell that dierivative, then you are the sucker.
Tokyokie
@Origuy: For arthroscopic knee surgery, you’ll probably only have a local anesthetic, so you should sufficiently conscious to advise the orthopod should he approach the wrong joint.
Mnemosyne
@Origuy:
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S):
Actually, what I did last time was draw the universal “no” symbol on my good kneecap (circle with a diagonal line through it) and then labeled the correct kneecap the way they directed me to. If the surgeon can’t figure out to ignore that one and instead operate on the one that has an arrow to it with my initials, then we probably have a much bigger problem.
Mnemosyne
Duplicate comment — deleted!
artkqtarks
I was skeptical about Theranos since when I first heard about it. The technology they claimed was in an area where biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering meet. Not only it is complicated, it is also unpredictable. This was not an area where a lone genius, how ever talented she may be, could singlehandedly revolutionize. It is not the same as writing codes. It was fascinating how the media and the investors bought into the idea.
The reason many people believed her was probably because there were famous and seemingly serious people on the board and among the initial investors. It seems she was very well connected to be able to lure them. They were not the kind of people who could evaluate the technology, but could give the appearance of legitimacy. This NYT article describes what kind of connections Holmes had.
I don’t necessarily think Holmes was trying to scam from the very beginning. She dropped out of Stanford when she was 19, but did not start to get the attention of media until she was around 30. Maybe she really wanted a success by any means by that time. She must have found that building a myth is much easier than developing a real technology, which is really hard.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Some are stupider then others.
TF79
I, for one, look forward to the new season of Silicon Valley where Pied Piper pivots to being a blood testing start-up. Will their vaporware materialize before their venture capital runs out? Will Gavin Belson and Hooli try to muscle them out? Is the secret to success at the bottom of Big Head’s Big Gulp? How many ways does Jared know to draw a man’s blood? JIAN-YANG!!!
grumpy realist
@EthylEster: I think this falls into the “the error bars run the length of the page!” basket….
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic:
You’d be surprised. And horrified. It has happened.
opiejeanne
@MattF: All done. My doctor signed his initials above the right eye. I laughed.
They said I was a model patient but I know that’s onlybecause I was out cold.
JanieM
@father pusbucket:
Being a genius doesn’t inoculate you against being a scam artist and a crook.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Prestige of the BOD is something to look at, but only in conjunction with their relevant expertise. One of the functions of the Board is to keep an eye on management to make sure they’re looking out for the company, but that requires the Board actually know something about what the company is doing. Theranos’s board was carefully chosen to be great at wowing the public but without enough knowledge to ask Holmes any uncomfortable questions about how the company was going to meet its promises. That’s something to file away as a warning sign for other companies that seem too good to be true.
JanieM
To put it a different way, maybe she didn’t “go to the dark side,” because she was always there.
Who can say whether Whizzer White was an outstanding lawyer who happened to have enough talent to play pro football, or a talented athlete who happened to be smart enough to end up on the Supreme Court?
sukabi
@father pusbucket: maybe her “genius” is in her sociopathy, and her ability to mimic…like the “catch me if you can” kid.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It’s a minor point, but this is probably a mistake. If you only write on one knee, then just seeing the writing there is enough for the doctor to know what’s happening. If you write on both knees, he needs to read the writing to know what’s happening. If you are going to write messages on both sides, you need to be careful to make sure the messages are as different as possible- different colors, completely different wording, etc.- to make the risk of confusion as small as possible. If you write “this one” on the correct knee and “not this one” on the wrong knee, the doctor might make a mistake if the “not” is covered, rubs off, or is otherwise hard to read.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@opiejeanne: Hmm, I seem to recall a doctor getting in trouble for signing his initials on a patient.//
Of course the where, what, and how were a bit different.
ETA are you a pirate for a day now?
Shalimar
@Mnemosyne: Try writing “WRONG” on the other one. “Not This One” can be horribly confusing if the Not gets erased somehow.
opiejeanne
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): I am a pirate for a day. ARRR. And will be one by night for a couple of weeks.
It feels odd, like something’s in my eye, like a contact lens that’s out of position. It’s just odd. I get to see the surgeon tomorrow morning, for a checkup.
Roger Moore
@bluefoot:
FDA approval wasn’t going to happen. My lab does some testing of FDA regulated active pharmaceutical ingredients, and I have now been through a couple of FDA inspections. Those inspectors do not take anyone’s bullshit, and they know enough about the science to tell when they’re hearing it. They have also been professionally trained in detecting lies and evasions. Theranos’s line of patter might have been enough to fool credulous investors, but they were not going to be able to BS their way through an FDA approval. I hate being inspected by the FDA, but it helps to give me confidence when I’m on the receiving end of a drug or medical test.
Ruckus
@VeniceRiley:
The board of the non profit that owned the for profit that I worked for had a guy on it who embezzled money from the company. Phoney travel receipts, charges, etc. Got away with it for years. Till he didn’t. He should be out of federal pen by now.
Barry
These board members all had lots and lots of experience, and rose through the ranks. They had networks whom they could ask.
But they didn’t, and stood to make a lot of money.
The answer is simple – they were greedy and corrupt.