I said the same thing in a previous thread on the subject, and for some reason it wasn’t well-received. People seem intent on believing that Holmes was willfully, knowingly, intentionally engaging in outright fraud, if not at first, then at some later point when they think it must have been obvious to anyone, including her, that her idea would never work. Whereas it seems pretty obvious to me that she was self-deluded or in denial, and really believed that, because it would be so great if her idea actually worked, it must be able to be made to work, and if she just kept pushing it hard enough, she could just kind of will it into existence.
Edit: I also think there was a sort of cargo cult phenomenon going on. She could tell Steve Jobs had been successful, but she couldn’t see how it was because he actually had good ideas and the ability to implement them. She thought it was because he wore black turtlenecks and gave public talks about his ideas in which he made them sound good. So she thought if she just did those things, she would be successful too.
Or how at times he (or substitute here your favorite “visionary”) was wrong about an idea so he wet on to something else.
In our culture’s lionizing of “visionaries” we run into this risk. Yes, you may have a Genius Visionary walking among us. But most of the time it is not reasonable to assume “Genius Visionary”.
I’ve read that there was a common manager type in Apple, those who had observed that Steve Jobs was an asshole who treated his workers badly, and believed that all they had to do to be equally successful was to be an asshole and treat their workers badly.
There’s also a big difference between telling people something will work, but it’s not ready yet; and telling people that it is working, and falsifying data to prove it. One is just salesmanship, and investors need to evaluate the claims on their merits. The other is fraud, even if there is genuine belief it will work eventually.
Regarding the comparisons to Steve Jobs, Holmes was told by a Stanford Medicine professor when she was just starting out that what she proposed to do was impossible. As I remember from documentaries, the professor said that many of the tests Holmes claimed to be doing could not be done on just a pinprick of blood but would need the amount drawn in a regular blood draw (i.e., a vial’s worth).
Visionaries convinced of their own genius and impatient with smaller minds can always tell you about other, earlier visionaries who were told something was impossible, and then went on to actually do it. And they’re right. But sometimes, y’know, some things simply are impossible, and after years and hundreds of millions spent, it is absolutely clear that Theranos’s objectives were, in very real terms, impossible. No amount of lying, before to investors, or now in court, can undo that.
I don’t disagree that what she did was fraud, and I’m not saying she should not be convicted of fraud. I think it would be totally appropriate for her to be convicted. What I think is incorrect is the idea that, at some point in her endeavors, even if she did not start out this way, while behind closed doors must have been rubbing her hands together and cackling with glee over the fraud she was knowingly and willfully getting away with. For one thing, if that were true, you would think she would have had an exit plan she could have executed while her company was still worth billions of dollars, and she could be sitting on a beach sipping Mai Tais in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the USA. I think it’s more likely that her telling people that her product was working and falsifying data to prove it was at worst, in her mind, just a little white lie that was a necessary step in her Law of Attraction/The Secret-based plan to will her idea into fruition.
My theory, which I start writing up before I read a lot of the posts upthread - I think it echoes a lot of the points being made.
I think the woman is an absolute idiot. But not just any idiot, an idiot raised in a bubble of privilege where everyone in her environment told her she was special.
Her identity and personal philosophy, insofar as anyone as blindingly stupid as Holmes has one…is a gish gallop of toxic positivity and thought-limiting cliches….”if you dream it you can be it!” “The only thing standing between you and your dreams is the word NO!” You can have anything if you want it bad enough”.
One day, some random confluence of her neural system caused her to have a thought that was WAY more cognizant than any thought she’d ever had, ever. That thought was “ wouldn’t it be cool if there was a really small machine that could take one drop of blood and instantly perform every blood test known to man?
Now, people that aren’t blindingly stupid have thoughts like this all time…….wouldn’t it be cool if I had a hat with a propeller that enabled me to fly? Wouldn’t it be cool if I had a car that made its own gasoline so you never had to buy gas ever again? but we recognize these thoughts for what they are.
But to Ms Holmes, this was a one in a billion flash of genius. Being blindingly stupid, she was convinced that thoughts like this were very rare and only experienced by a handful of world-shaping geniuses.
And now that she’d had that thought, the work was done. She gave absolutely no consideration into what would be involved in making such a machine, because she to stupid to have that kind of thought. She was still stuck on all the… “If you dream hard enough, you can’t fail”. “The only thing keeping you from success is doubt”, the glurge that her brain was filled with.
So she talked to a bunch of people and gave a lot of money to everyone that kept a straight face when she asked them to build her magic blood box, fired anyone that expressed doubt or skepticism because their negativity was the only thing holding back the magic blood box and ultimately ended up with a bunch of people that pretended to make a magic blood box.
And since she truly believed in the magic blood box, she was able to sell it.
It’s easy to sell things that aren’t based in reality.
And I honestly believe she still believes in the magic blood box and that she thinks she is the victim of an elaborate plot to suppress her brilliance. She’s a moron.
Few people realize that Theranos was on the brink of bringing a successful blood test machine to market, until malevolent regulators forced the company out of business.
Yes, she reminds me of Anna Sorokin, aka “Anna Delvey,” the fake heiress who managed to live like a wealthy NYC socialite for several years by conning and defrauding people. People who knew Sorokin have said that she absolutely genuinely believe she was going to make her “arts foundation” happen, and even at her trial she appeared bemused at the suggestion that she had done anything wrong.
If only the one blood test it actually could perform was Lance Armstrong’s drug screen. But then the massive collision of positive self-delusions would blow the whole planet to flinders.
Everything I know about this woman I learned in this thread and some of the related threads. (so, “not much.”)
Why is this story getting such legs? Was she famous before she was charged? I would think it’s a rather routine fraud case, but people seemed much more invested in hoping she’ll crash and burn than in the average white collar criminal case. What’s driving the interest, here and elsewhere?
It absolutely is NOT a routine fraud case. It actually is a fascinating story. Read the book “Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou.
We care because of the sheer volume of funds; the injury caused to individuals with bad test results; the audacity of the fraudster. She wasn’t famous - that’s part of the amazing part of the story. She was a college drop out, who modeled herself after Steve Jobs (down to the wardrobe and the speaking voice). She came from an upper middle-class / lower-end rich family, who used her ties to get investors. Much of the fraud was against the US government; her “machine” was used by the army in battle conditions. I said “machine” because, IIRC (and I may not), all samples from the Army were sent back to the lab for “verification” before results went out; results actually came from the lab, negating any time savings from the “machine”.
Theranos was in the news and Holmes was the new It Girl long before it turned into a fraud story. There was a lot of interest in Holmes and Theranos before the fraud became widely known so it follows that there’s still a lot of interest in it today.
Yeah, she actually had 40 of these things in Walgreens outlets running “tests” on people. Fraud, yes - routine, no. It was a truly spectacular implosion.
