> Theranos was doing was using traditional equipment to run the tests as a smokescreen for the fact that they didn’t have any working technology. So the results should have been similar to anyone else running them when that was the case.

> But there is a problem that when a company is saying they’re doing one thing or using one technology but your actual tests could be run on unknown combinations of unknown lab hardware depending on the day and the whims of a CEO trying to defraud investors, you don’t know what kind of results you’re going to get.

Exactly. They were using Siemens machines, but they often had insufficient blood because they were trying to maintain a pretense of "nano collection". Siemens' machines weren't even trying to pretend they could work like this, so Theranos kept trying to figure out ways to dilute or diffuse the samples they did have to get to a usable volume for the tests. But of course every experimentation there was destructive, so they had even less to use.

So we're not talking about error rates on properly calibrated machines, with sufficient blood that re-tests could be performed before needing another collection, we're talking about error rates on effectively misusing machines.