I recall there were plenty of people on here going into bat for Theranos way after others were calling it fraud.
replyThe thing is, she expertly rode a belief system that was already prevalent: that SV was going to change the world and that SV and what was happening there was different. Plenty of WeWork fans as well. Plenty of fans of firms that actually did something as well, but most of those "did something"s were a website.
10 years ago I would defend FSD against the naysayers who said it would never work. We are currently at the stage of figuring out what approximates never.
replyI’d forgotten there was a time when “Tesla fan” didn’t feel like a political statement.
replyWeWork fans were incredible.
replyI posted about Theranos 2013. Not entirely sure, but I think it was when they launched publicly.
replyCrazy how my gut feeling was more than vindicated.
A lot of the comments on that thread are about how the board is full of military/CIA it smells like a cover company. It had Henry Kissinger on it of all people.
replyDid we ever find out what all those people were doing at Theranos? I really haven’t kept up to date.
I have a theory! They saw all the other security state people involved, and figured this was something it would be a good career move to support without knowing exactly why.
reply"Don't obey in advance", Tim Snyder said. But obeying in advance is called showing initiative and is a great career move. In secretive industries it can be hard to know what to obey in advance, but they don't let that stop them!
One of the unspoken secrets of research is that a lot of people are doing it to keep themselves in a job. It is perfectly possible to do research for years which goes nowhere, just goes over old ground etc. As long as the money rolls in, someone's making a living and not necessarily dishonestly if they're at the lower levels.
replyI think there was a lot of resentment here because of how easily it appeared she was raising money and how quickly the company grew at first without having a working product and a murmur from experts that their miniaturization play may not be able to work at all.
replyI remember before the expose a friend that did blood draws for a living was just like, “huh? It’s impossible to do the tests without a larger sample, it’s just not how it works”.
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