# The trial of Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos)\[sentenced to 11+ yrs, 18Nov2022\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 10, 2021, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138 "2021-07-10T04:42:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/161 "2021-12-01T19:25:36Z")
Come to think of it, I affected a bit of a lower voice when I was a radio dj decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/162 "2021-12-01T19:30:12Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I continue to be puzzled by this fixation on Elizabeth Holmes’ public speaking voice. It’s one thing to lower your voice an octave. It’s quite another to lower it so much it doesn’t sounds normal. I get that “Elizabeth Holmes, Entrepreneur” is a character she created in the mold of Steve Jobs as her public persona. Pretty sure every major CEO, politician, celebrity has a public persona that is not their real self. I don’t hold that against her, especially as a woman she has to deal the “likeability penalty” that men don’t. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/163 "2021-12-01T19:41:53Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I continue to be puzzled by this fixation on Elizabeth Holmes’ public speaking voice…For a woman trying to pitch to (mostly male) investors and market her company to (mostly male) business executives and impress (mostly male) journalists, her affected voice doesn’t seem the least bit odd or “phony” to me. Ditto ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/164 "2021-12-01T19:44:16Z")
All I know is the first time I heard her low voice, it struck me as weirdly unnatural. Very uncanny valley. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/165 "2021-12-01T19:55:19Z")
It’s also of a piece with the many other lies she told, retold and then told again over several years, as she endangered lives and wasted more than a billion of investors’ dollars. We know now, and I hope the jury will see, that you simply cannot believe much of what she says and, in a way, who she is or holds herself out to be. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/166 "2021-12-01T20:03:53Z")
One half of me thinks: judging a woman by her voice is yet another manifestation of our culture’s bigotry against women in position of authority. Who cares if a manner of speaking is affected? It’s like complaining that her hair is not its natural color. The other half of me thinks: of course a Bene Gesserit witch uses the Voice. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/167 "2021-12-01T20:11:45Z")
😆 Plus some characters ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/168 "2021-12-01T20:13:41Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > It’s also of a piece with the many other lies she told, retold and then told again over several years… I find her low voice odd and distracting, not because it’s low, but because it has a weird quality to it, kind of Kermit the Frog-like to my ears. But I don’t consider it duplicitous or some sign of untrustworthiness. She lies like a rug, but her voice isn’t one of those lies. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/169 "2021-12-03T18:41:32Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I continue to be puzzled by this fixation on Elizabeth Holmes’ public speaking voice. As I’ve mentioned before in this thread, for both women _and_ men, affecting a lower tone in public speaking is literally Public Speaking 101. As I’ve also mentioned, I myself almost unconsciously affect a lower tone when I engage in public speaking, and I’m a man, with a fairly low pitch to begin with. For a woman trying to pitch to (mostly male) investors and market her company to (mostly male) business executives and impress (mostly male) journalists, her affected voice doesn’t seem the least bit odd or “phony” to me. My “fixation” is only when I keep seeing people act as if we’re saying it’s weird to lower your voice at all. But that’s not what we’re arguing. We’re saying that you can go too far, in a way that sounds goofy and fake. Sure, public speaking will teach you to use your full voice, which tends to be lower in pitch. And, for women with higher voices, they will usually be taught to use their natural lower tone, and not have as much variation in pitch. However, you will also be taught that you should sound natural, not like someone putting on a voice, because that will make you seem insincere. Yes, I get that you guys can’t hear what we’re talking about, which is part of what makes it difficult to understand our point. But I ask this: which makes more sense? That we are all imagining something that isn’t there, or you guys aren’t perceiving something that we clearly hear? I’d say the latter. I particularly say that because I was a vocal major in college. Not only did I learn how to change the timbre of my voice, but I also learned how some people have a harder time hearing the difference than others. While these people aren’t exactly tone deaf, as they can still hear basic pitch, they have a hard time with timbre. They have to be taught to hear these differences in singing voices. I think it’s telling that the perception of whether her voice tells us anything about her character is so evenly divided between those of us who can hear the difference and those who can’t. I don’t actually disagree with @puzzlegal at all that a woman lowering her voice tells us nothing—that it is normal. I don’t disagree with her that having a male voice can make people listen to you when they wouldn’t otherwise. I just argue that Elizabeth Holmes went beyond that, and that this can tell me something about her character. It tells me that she take the normal things to the extremes. And that fits with everything else we know about her. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2021, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/170 "2021-12-03T18:54:04Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > My “fixation” is only when I keep seeing people act as if we’re saying it’s weird to lower your voice at all. But that’s not what we’re arguing. We’re saying that you can go too far, in a way that sounds goofy and fake. To the extent that her voice sounds goofy and fake, that just seems to me like she’s not particularly _good_ at modulating her timbre, to get to a deeper-but-still-natural-sounding pitch, rather than some sort of indication of her deep character flaws. As to the “fixation”, I don’t know, maybe it’s just my own distorted perception, but it just seems like there’s as much discussion in this thread of her voice as there is of the actual fraud she committed. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2021, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/171 "2021-12-03T19:03:45Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > One half of me thinks: judging a woman by her voice is yet another manifestation of our culture’s bigotry against women in position of authority. Who cares if a manner of speaking is affected? It’s like complaining that her hair is not its natural color. I would probably judge a man if I thought his voice was affected. For me, Holmes’ voice doesn’t just sound deep it sounds odd. Like someone on Saturday Night Live playing a character in a skit. I’m not going to hold it against her because in the grand scheme of things who cares? But her voice when taken with everything else, it sure looks like it’s part of a pattern to fool people. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/172 "2021-12-03T19:23:33Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I think it’s telling that the perception of whether her voice tells us anything about her character is so evenly divided between those of us who can hear the difference and those who can’t. What difference do you think some of us can’t hear? She certainly uses a much lower voice when making formal presentations than she does in other contexts. I don’t think that’s hard to hear. I just don’t think that reflects on her character. I mean, i think she has a lot of character flaws, and probably killed a bunch of people due to promulgating bogus medical tests. But I don’t think that’s related to her using a lie voice for public speaking. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2021, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/173 "2021-12-08T22:12:43Z")
The defense rests: > **[Defense team rests in Elizabeth Holmes fraud trial](https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-health-elizabeth-holmes-f03d562ea5fe5377c8a835b4365bb862)** > > SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Fallen entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has finished her attempt to persuade a jury that she suffered lapses in business judgment but never engaged in fraud while running blood-testing startup Theranos. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2021, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/174 "2021-12-09T14:56:53Z")
Interesting. From the Wall Street Journal: > The government said it wouldn’t bring a rebuttal case, which signaled the trial is heading for closing arguments. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said those would take place Dec. 16 and Dec. 17. That means the jury will start deliberating late on Dec. 17, a Friday, or on Dec. 20, the week of Christmas. > **[The Elizabeth Holmes Trial: The Defense Rests Its Case](https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-holmess-lawyers-rest-their-case-in-criminal-fraud-trial-11638991035?page=1)** > > Attorneys for the blood-testing startup’s founder wound up their case, including several days of her testimony in which she acknowledged regrets but also placed blame on her former deputy and boyfriend. We will find out soon about Holmes’ fate. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/175 "2021-12-15T07:07:45Z")
Not much going on lately… ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/176 "2021-12-15T17:44:37Z")
The defense rested last week, and closing arguments are tomorrow. So a little lull right now, but there will possibly be a verdict before Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/177 "2021-12-15T21:37:12Z")
Yes, tomorrow. And the delays in this trial have delayed Sunny Balwani‘s trial. That was supposed to begin on 1/11, and now will begin on 2/15. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/178 "2021-12-22T18:36:49Z")
An update: > **[Jury deliberations to begin for Elizabeth Holmes' case](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/jury-deliberations-to-begin-for-elizabeth-holmes-case)** > > The jurors now responsible for assessing 11 charges of fraud and conspiracy against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes are scheduled to begin their first full day of deliberations on Monday. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/179 "2021-12-22T19:33:43Z")
They deliberated Monday and Tuesday with no verdict. They have today off and resume tomorrow. If they still haven’t reached a verdict after tomorrow, it is likely they will break until January 3. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138/180 "2021-12-22T21:11:08Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > If they still haven’t reached a verdict after tomorrow, it is likely they will break until January 3. “Uh, could you send up all the exhibits and transcripts of testimony? We forgot a bunch of stuff.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trial-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentenced-to-11-yrs-18nov2022/946138.md?page=10)