Theranos Was A Dumpster Fire - But Here's Where It Was Brilliant | Answers With Joe

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The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is a story of a big idea that got overshadowed by even bigger lies. Here's why the idea was actually kinda great, why it failed, and how it could still be a reality. (Sort-of.)
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LINKS LINKS LINKS -
www.cnn.com/2022/07/07/tech/t...
www.scmp.com/magazines/style/...
journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
theconversation.com/whats-beh...
www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019...
mashable.com/article/hbo-ther...
genetics.wustl.edu/staff-membe...
www.globalpointofcare.abbott/...
www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/n...
www.genalyte.com/home/maverick/
/ could_theranoss_idea_h...
sifted.eu/articles/blood-test...
TIMESTAMPS -
0:00 Intro
1:25 The Idea of Elizabeth Holmes
3:36 Holmes' Story
8:31 Tangent Cam
9:32 Why Didn't Theranos Work?
10:52 Advancements in Microfluidic Testing
13:53 Sponsor - Storyblocks

[@Cmdtheartist]

I work for a hospital lab, and I DISTINCTLY remember telling the lab administrators ALL about Theranos and Holmes and I remember that they all had worried looks on their faces and I remember thinking they must be worried about their jobs, but no, they were simply concerned that an idiot like myself had a job in a lab.

[@TheBlueprintsOrlando]

Your candor is honorable

[@CessnaPilot99]

Haha thats a good one. Thanks for the laugh friend!

[@Jason2003]

Self burn! Thanks for the 😆

[@seriousbutfunny2]

😅

[@mattjohnson3rd3]

I remember seeing this instrument and saying, there was no way possible that little machine was going to EVER take the place of the Lab instrumentation. I knew right away it was a scam

[@adamb2216]

“This story doesn’t need a sex scandal, but it’s there” got me to laugh. Lol

[@Celisar1]

Just that there wasn’t a sex scandal.

[@anthonynicholson5523]

It's there...and it's gross to think about lol

[@jimwolfgang9433]

well, there was. even though they denied it, they were luvvin' it up

[@MrBillkaz]

Never trust anyone who wears turtle necks

[@ccoolequideow]

This story has literally changed my life; i was always curious about the device. from the time it was a ''miracle'', and then i watched the downfall happen. I was interested to know scientifically why it couldn't work, and then i realized i had a new passion! I'm now studying to be a lab technician, 1 year done and 2 left! lol

[@captainLoknar]

It was a capitalism story from A - Z. Nothing to do with science. You'll figure it out at the start of your 3rd year and you'll be trained to sniff out vaporware of all kinds.

[@ccoolequideow]

@@captainLoknar oh no i know haha, it's just that learning the science that it would take to work is what i love :D

[@witchdoctor1394]

I've been a Lab Tech for ~16 years now. It's a great field to be in! I kinda wish Joe had talked to a Lab Tech before polishing his script because there's some stuff in there that is exaggerated or not entirely correct... It's a field that's an obtuse and often invisible, but essential, part of healthcare. Most people's only contact with it is a blood draw and that ends the experience until their healthcare provider informs them if anything comes up unusual.

[@wrightmf]

@@witchdoctor1394 a friend worked as a lab tech for a number of years for the BAQMD, she proudly called herself a lab rat.

[@sasquatl]

Working in a lab isn't really that exciting. I worked in a podiatrist lab before.

[@nevarran]

It's like if she promised to revolutionize traffic, by making underground tunnels where cars are moved at speeds of up to 200 mph by automatic pods that whisk people around like some sort of "wormholes", and then coming up with a taxi service through a single runnel with RGB lights. That kind of "brilliant".

[@ryantwombly720]

Forgive me if somebody has already pointed this out, but it just occurred to me that Theranos pulled a reverse Malcolm. They were so preoccupied with whether they should, they didn’t stop to think if they could.

[@rogerstarkey5390]

And/ or didn't have the talent or knowledge to understand they probably couldn't?

[@JusNoBS420]

😂

[@WatanabeNoTsuna.]

Ahaha! Brilliant comment! 😂

[@mikedrop4421]

@@rogerstarkey5390 I know this is gonna go over poorly with this crowd but Elon Musk and Tesla/SpaceX are doing the same thing. Full self driving has been promised for years and is farther away now then it ever was and due to the inability for computers to emotionally process situations such as the trolley problem full self driving is probably never going to be fully possible without accepting the possibility of our entire transportation system grinding to a halt constantly. SpaceX has promised reusable rockets. The amount of damage caused to the materials during launch and recovery means extensive inspection and refurbishment is needed between flights and always will period. Then look at hyperloop. The numbers were run 100 years ago when it was first proposed. To pull a vacuum on hundreds of miles of tunnel takes insane amounts of energy and turns the tubes into bombs that will implode with the slightest structure issue.

[@michaelbohannon527]

Ha

[@chrisblake4198]

The reason I knew it was a scam is it was entirely driven from the silicon valley investor culture end of things, and not the basic science and chemistry end of things. My mom who was a Medical Technologist for 40 years (the person who does those blood tests and knows how all their machines worked) explained to me in about 5 minutes how her claims were flat out impossible. It's not even a 'quality of the technology' thing, it's a 'laws of physics and chemistry' thing. Even the experts you quoted were being charitable. Every blood test relies on either a physical or chemical process that transforms the sample. You can't do those without essentially ruining the sample for other tests, and you can only subdivide a sample for use in multiple tests so much. Test results rely on statistical accuracy, you need to count enough of something in a given volume of blood to get a valid result. If Holmes had completed her education, she'd know those details, and when she was told by her employees she should have listened. If she'd somehow come up with a workaround, she wouldn't have needed to seek funding to build it because her patents on the several major innovations in materials science, sensing technology, and computing would have been broadly applicable to many many other things and would have earned Theranos trillions to spend on development of a blood testing device.

[@zephaniahgreenwell8151]

@@BooksRebound They didn't just believe the uneducated figurehead. Extremely wealthy people were investing in Theranos because other wealthy people were investing. Holmes' charisma helped but was not as important as the early million-dollar investments from her family.

[@johndododoe1411]

The trick used by real world test assay machines (like the ones mentioned near the end of this video) is to group together tests that share the same sample preparation. Next trick is choosing tests that look for things present (or not) in large enough density that only microliters need to be examined. Vitals like blood sugar levels and infections that dissipate millions of cells or other unwanted items in the body's 5 liter blood volume. Looking for a disease that only shows up as 10000 bacteria in the bloodstream won't be possible without at least 1 ml (which would contain 2 single bacteria). An eye exam will easily discover a missing head, but not a broken leg.

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

this. a sample is spoiled after any test. she was a capitalist and hustler, grifter, scammer, con artist.

[@metamorphicorder]

All of what you said, plus, some tests require multiple tests on seperate samples taken at different times under different conditions and other tests are literally visual confirmation of elements in blood viewed under a microscope by a hemotologist or other doc. Lots of tests like that. So many reasons that this wont happen at our current level of technology if at all. Even as someone who isnt a medical professional, just someone who had read lots and lots and lots about a bunch of different stuff, i was totally sure when i heard about this that it was a scam. I was totally confused as to how some of her investor list, all of which were fairly sophisticated experienced investors could be innocently taken in by this because i would expect that they would have access and avail themselves of expert consultation in the field to analyze the claims in the pitch as to their probablitly of success. I could have with a few minutes of googling and wikipedia searches how this is impossible. Plus listening to holmes talk, even ignoring the voice and her haptics, her words were thickly slathered with the confidence scams of patent medicine salesmen and people who sell bills of goods. She was interviewing once and someone asked her about what provisions she had made for if this doesnt work, and she said none, if you make backup contingencies youve already decided to fail. Thats the worst general life advice that ive heard. She was detectably and obviously a scammer.

[@mollydooker9636]

Thanks for your comment. You sum up the nonsense very succinctly.

[@JonS]

An engineer on my team worked for Theranos. He won't say much about it, but he believes Elizabeth Holmes started out with honest intentions. It actually took quite a bit for us to persuade him to leave Theranos and accept our job offer (he's not the leaving kind). Personally, Holmes always struck me as inauthentic (that voice!) and I'm very wary of inauthentic people.

[@petraarkian7720]

I believe it. Been around startups my whole life, grew up in sillicon valley and coding since I was a little kid. I was in a program called The Impact Fellowship for young entrepreneurs who wanted to focus on making technology to help people. Everyone there was how I imagine Elizabeth to have been, and I can easily see how many of us could have ended up like her. So many of us had ideas that were great in theory but that we were in no way qualified to build. Of course, in a random fellowship program thats fine. We get to be young and hopeful and learn a bit about how the real world works so that maybe someday we can build something real. The problem is Elizabeth was in sillicon valley at a time when investors were throwing money at anything, and she had the family connections to get a series A funded with nothing but her name. Then once she had an actual company with scientist and researchers she just couldn't accept the reality that her idea was impossible. Its scary how powerful denial is, while I want to believe most people would have stopped when they realized they were hurting real people, unfortunately history seems to suggest that when we slowly push people towards worse and worse choices they aren't great at changing track. Especially when Elizabeth had all these people around her telling her how brilliant and visionary she was. I personally feel like its a cautionary tale of how important it is for rich kids to get a reality check now and then.

[@shadelings]

Not surprised at all considering that the grandfather of one of the whistleblowers (Tyler Schultz) was George Schultz who was on the Theranos board and Tyler initially remained anonymous for the very reason that his own family member was all in, hook line and sinker. As far as I know, Tyler's grandfather refused to believe him up until the very end, if he did at all before he passed. And I totally agree that when one of the first steps someone (Elizabeth) takes when starting their 'revolutionary' initiative is to literally change the tone their voice from the outset, that screams that it's basically all show and not much else.

[@vladpetric7493]

Some ideas are so addictive that people suspend all disbelief. Theranos' idea is really such an idea. About 10% of people hate needles (I'm not talking about disliking an injection/a blood draw; I'm talking about a much stronger negative reaction here); tell them that they won't have to do that anymore and they'll immediately think you're the second coming

[@bazoo513]

This whole affair is also a symptom of American cult of youth. People forget that for every young genius (with or without quotation marks) dropping out of college and doing great things (mostly thanks to backing of rich daddy or such) there are tens of thousands of talented people who finished their studies and proceeded to, rather non-spectacularly, make our civilization tick while repaying their obscene student loans.

[@joshmellon390]

While I agree that sucks, if we're going to cancel debt we should start with medical collections that keep people from buying a house, car, or having any version of credit whatsoever. People made choices to go to school, no one made a choice to need a terrible medical system.

[@Drew_goo]

merica

[@kerythan]

That they chose to take...

[@TheWebstaff]

@@Drew_goo Fuck Yeah!

[@sebastianucero7535]

"thanks to backing of rich daddy". It's amazing how this little detail is often ignored or erased in the "origin story" of every young genius/tech mogul. All of the "big techs" are very richly founded. But Media tells us we can all do it. If we not, we are a failure. Of course this leads to shortcuts like this history of Theranos. Or how we the normies call it: Crime.

[@nigelhirth2181]

I've worked in clinical lab science for 18 years now. Everyone i knew professionally saw right through the Theranos pitch as soon as we saw it. We STILL have to occasionally explain to a doctor or nurse that it was all BS and why.

[@CataclysmZA]

You can be more efficient with blood use with better technology, but you can't start with a drop of blood and expect to run 200 tests on it.

[@elfishawol4506]

Yeah, also a MLS. Everyone I've talked to about it at work has laughed and asked how Theranos got away with it because it all sounds ridiculous.

[@Rob_Enhoud]

It's basically like surveying 10 people on the street if the sky is blue and if they are financially stable. This sample size is sufficient in order to determine what the color of the sky is, but is not enough to determine how well the economy is. You simply need a larger sample size in order to draw an accurate conclusion to most of the questions Theranos was trying to answer.

[@Draconianoverlord55]

The same when engineers try to explain why Tesla's semi is stupid, along with 80% of what musk says or promotes

[@mikeyearwood]

I worked for Dr. Stephan VA's RIP Head of Microbiology for Toronto Hospital Corp. There was not much to Theranos.

[@coffeebeforemascara]

OMG. I just went through a spate of being obsessed with learning all about this Theranos thing. I started with binge-watching The Dropout. How she kept her romantic relationship status with Sunny a secret all those years is triumphed only by her ability to pull the wool over so many people's eyes! Astonishing. I rounded out the fictional representation of the true life events with actual videos of her and I do recall that in the past I literally watched a Ted talk with her and was in highly impressed so I indeed myself was highly bamboozled by her speech. Anyway I watched several interviews of her in real life recorded for posterity and it's just unbelievable I can't wait to see what her sentencing will be along with Sunny's who absolutely was 100% complicit in the entire affair. By the way your intro to the video with the volume dial was absolutely hysterical!

[@ennds4636]

This was me like 2 months ago!! I couldn't get enough, I watched a ton of news reports and mini docs after The Dropout, and anything that looks like new information gets an immediate click! I'm very interested in seeing the sentencing...i really hope they get hit hard. Faking it til you make it is one thing, but never slowing down or stopping to make sure the tech is keeping up with your promises (or is even possible at all) is just unethical.

[@davidhitchen5369]

I can't believe that nobody asked for independent studies to verify that the machine was actually doing the tests before they sunk money into it. Anybody who ever worked in a pathology lab should have been suspicious of the claim of doing 200 different tests on one tiny blood sample.

[@OhWell0]

You could have had a phlebotomist ask a few questions, like, how do you get serum results in less time than it takes for serum to separate?

[@squirrelcovers6340]

Or just a lowly lab analyst.....🙋

[@nigelhirth2181]

There is absolutely nothing lowly about clinical lab scientists. Without the phlebs, MLTs and MTs, all those doctors are literally just guessing. There is almost no other function in healthcare anywhere that doesn't begin and/or end in the lab. Keep ya heads up, labrats!

[@OhWell0]

@@squirrelcovers6340 Hi lab analyst! Former phleb here. I went to the dark side (nursing).

[@aliensoup2420]

Probing questions were pointless…she would always claim it was a proprietary secret and could not share the information.

[@paulgilbert2506]

iStat by Abbott Labs does it somehow.

[@andie_pants]

I think Theranos' problem was ultimately that they opted for the standard encabulator over the turbo version.

[@Sithhy]

They went for the turdo over turbo

[@donaldfarquar]

That and going without the flux capacitor. If they had that they could have just kept going back with the single drop until they had enough.

[@jerrybarr3354]

Yes, all we need is more boost 😁

[@squirrelcovers6340]

😂👍

[@davidmacphee3549]

@@donaldfarquar FUNNY

[@CessnaPilot99]

"I mean you know how nobody respects me around here". "Of course" Holy Jesus that had me laughing for so long. What a great intro. Keep em coming Joe!

[@EloTheCurious]

I LOVE that you do those skits at the beginning and end of videos. They bring me joy, and make me feel more willing to amuse some of my silly video ideas that involve observation of Meta thought and self talk. Brilliant. ✨

[@jonasnyman8189]

Gotta say, I'm loving these intro skits you've been putting in lately!

[@Em4gdn1m]

Thanks!

[@jackalope2302]

Yes the Joes are hilarious

[@timhaldane7588]

Lately?

[@mamacito1795]

Took me a while to click with the voice thing 😄 his intros are great

[@CessnaPilot99]

I couldn't stop laughing when he said "you know how nobody respects me around here" other Joe: of course

[@CybershamanX]

If they had just stopped for a moment and said, look, we can definitely do this handful of tests right now and moving forward, our goal will be to add another few tests each year to our list of confirmed and accurate tests. If they had just done that they would likely still be in business. Money does weird things to people. 😕

[@jeffk464]

bingo

[@zwerko]

The problem is that there were already devices that were doing a small amount of tests and were improving/adding more every year, Theranos wanted to leap-frog them by claiming magical abilities. And the scientifically-illiterate public, including many investors, was buying it despite the cries from medical professionals that what Theranos is claiming is not possible...

[@Kurushimi1729]

They wouldn't have become a billion dollar company that way

[@-NightAngel]

Joe, I don't know if people tell you this enough, but you are awesome. You do a really good job talking about complicated topics in an easy to understand way and I appreciate it. You're one of my favorite youtubers. Keep up the great work. ❤️

[@EricJames429]

Joe, I really enjoyed the inclusion of the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, I worked for Rockwell International (in the switching division) back in 1997 which was sold off and became Alvaria in 2021 and where I am still employed. We used to play that video around the office (in Wood Dale, IL) all the time. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@DFSJR1203]

I was an engineer on a hand held blood analyzer that ran off 1 or 2 drops of blood. It was able to do standard blood test along with blood gas testing. The device unlike the Theranos device was real and is called the i-STAT System sold by AABOTT Labs. I helped design the Glucose and troponin I (cTnI) cartridges. The Troponin I cartridge would show if a patient had or was having a heart attack by looking for elevated Troponin levels. I was also the co-developer of the ACT-k &ACT-c tests that where used to test Heparin Levels in the blood.

[@machematix]

Good work! People like you are better for humanity than people like Holmes.

[@tessiepinkman]

Fantastic work! It's people like you investors should throw money at, not college drop outs with an idea that could *only* work with magic.

[@paulgilbert2506]

I am an anesthesiologist who has used the iStat. FIRST thing I thought when I heard about Theranos was "How is this different than the iStat?"

[@petevenuti7355]

How do you feel about the statement that such tech is impossible? I imagined the theronos claimed tech working something like genalyte, Monoclonal antibodies coupled with microsensors , but just in huge arrays within a microfluidic network. Is there really a reason why that couldn't happen? The only reasons I can see for something like many of her claims *not* to be possible are , it would be limited to what antibodies could be made for with enough selectively, not reusable and expensive. So, does that sound right to you?

[@Tribuneoftheplebs]

I hope I can work on something as cool as that one day

[@steveb0503]

The problem with TOO many of these "outside-the-box" entrepreneurs is if you actually know anything about ANYTHING, you'll quickly come to the realization that the people actually capable of accomplishing anything CLOSE to their proposed technological innovations must ALSO know that they defy physics - or, at least: ALL limits of practicality...

[@CrissaKentavr]

I don't particularly like that way of thinking, though. What's impossible often is based upon napkin guesses which can be wildly wrong. See also heat pumps. Rockets to orbit. Cellphone radio sizes.

[@3snoW_]

@@CrissaKentavr Yes, but innovation almost always comes from experts in their fields, not an outsider with a trendy idea that somehow everyone who works in the business managed to never think about before.

[@jamminwrenches860]

@@CrissaKentavr Sort of. Cellphone radio sizes and orbiting rockets came to be with incremental developments inching them closer to the state we know them now. Holmes had a great idea but no knowledge of the field she was inspired to change, so she had no idea how hard it was to accomplish the inspiration. She had an idea but was too ignorant to understand those things have been tried. Her ignorance allowed her confidence that she used to scam people, general ignorance of the field helped people believe the scam. Add in the unicorn factor and political correctness and nobody was allowed to question her. Yes inspiration is required for most developments and can move the state leaps and bounds forward however blunders like Holmes can set the science back a few decades by creating fear to invest.

[@zwerko]

@@CrissaKentavr You're forgetting that all of those came by gradual advancements over many decades, even centuries and they seemed impossible only as an idea. We had a basic idea what heat is and that, in theory, we could 'move' it from one place to another almost 2 centuries ago... But it took more than a century just to find a practical way to achieve that, and then another century to get to the crazy efficiency of today. Had you suggested that you'll build a device that will have 200-400% efficiency of heating up things compared to regular burning fuel 200 years ago, you'd be laughed out from the room, and rightly so.

[@DragoniteSpam]

Or to look at it another way, most of the people who pride themselves in thinking outside the box have to eventually learn why the box was there in the first place.

[@jonathancarter1769]

Well played Joe Scott. I got on KZbin to first see what video you put out today but the first video that popped up was this video not realizing it was actually yours and so I clicked on it and then I was like wow this is Joe Scott

[@seitanbeatsyourmeat666]

I wish you’d make a video on the outrageous things medical LEDs can do. Acne, wrinkles, but also killing viruses and fungi… my husband has had a toenail fungus for almost a decade (military life!) and we’ve tried everything; creams, nail coatings, medicine from the doctor, etc. I bought a blue light mask for my teen son’s cystic acne (and it worked pretty well!) but after reading about blue light for foot fungus, I decided to try it on my husband. It took about 6 weeks of ten minute sessions of the mask every night, but there’s a definite line where the fungus has stopped growing from the cuticle, and as his nail grows out, the fungus is going with it. Fingers crossed that it worked, we’ll know in a few months. (I used alcohol to wipe the mask down after it was used, fyi. Toe fungus on someone’s face would be awkward to explain.) This is some Star Trek medical bay shite, imo

[@DrMackSplackem]

By all means do express your faith in this tech in the form of venture capital.

[@brooklyna007]

I was skeptical but I looked it up. Looks like there is are a few papers showing that blue light alone can kill the spores of some fungi: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5512304/ That's crazy. Hopefully that isn't doing any damage to the skin.

[@barrydysert2974]

When Joe said, "photonic ring resonator" i nearly dropped my tricorder !:-) 🖖 💜🙏⚡️

[@jamietaylor5570]

Thinking of something that would be highly desirable but that you can't deliver isn't "brilliant". Literally anyone can do that. Convincing people to give you a ton of finance for the thing you can't deliver is actually the harder part.

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

That’s what I think every time someone goes on at length about fusion, nanotechnology, warp drives or colonizing Mars. Yeah, it sounds impressive when sciency words get wrapped around the ideas but they’re either impossible or centuries of hard work away from realization. I just click off when someone concludes that they “only” need to violate thermodynamics or causation to make it all work.

[@entropy8634]

@@CarFreeSegnitz ah yes. It's a shame that reality gets in the way of their fantasy

[@acanuck1679]

This was the best synopsis of the Theranos that I have viewed/read. Thank you for clarifying what happened--and the dreams that Holmes and her partner sought to exploit.Thank you.

[@GhostHostIzzo]

I worked in product development for a licensing company. I saw a surprising amount of flim-flammery come across my desk. The best one was a lighted panel that was powered wirelessly at a distance! As if that wasn't grand enough, it operated off 'harmonic waves' and could potentially produce more power than you put into it. Once you throw the laws of thermodynamics out the window, anything is possible. The saddest were the ones like Elizabeth Holmes. People who overdosed on The Secret and believed if they imitated the great entrepreneurs (by dropping out, and being a self absorbed jerk), they were destined to succeed.

[@radonato]

"If you've never spent any time on a stock footage site, you really should." And the party begins....😆

[@migage]

As with another episode recently, cannot more highly enough recommend Robert Evans' "Behind the Bastards" podcast. Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos was covered in so much more detail (a few hour long episodes) that even this great video does. Well worth the listen, as is the entire podcast.

[@rubysmith8818]

I've never heard of that podcast, but the name alone makes me want to tune in.

[@Ixidora]

What platform is it on? I couldn't find it here on KZbin

[@av_oid]

There also the “Bad Blood: the final chapter” podcast which was by John Carreyrou, the WSJ reporter who broke the original story. And there’s “The Dropout” podcast which is an companion to the mini series of the same name. These are both on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere.

[@Dipsoid]

The Behind the Bastards episode is great. I'd also highly recommend American Scandal series on Theranos which presents it in a semi-fictionalized story form.

[@marlonmoncrieffe0728]

Is that Hulu miniseries any good?

[@mattpage9826]

Your intro was brilliant!! Keep the content coming!! Thanks Joe!

[@Keyz_Lomaklin]

I clicked, sat for the first 6 seconds, mashed pause so I can go make a cup of coffee... this is what you do Joe, you influence people...

[@MalachiMarvin]

I'm going to disagree that imagining something is brilliant. Imagine if we could transport anything around the planet in 5-seconds. Imagine how that would change things. Imagine if a nuclear powered wrist watch could power your entire home. Imagine how that would change things. Imagine if we could run hundreds of diagnostic tests on a single drop of blood. Imagine how that would change things. Yea, imagining it isn't the brilliant part.

[@sidpomy]

100% agree - she's not brilliant for coming up with a magic product not based in any real data or science. The brilliant people are those who know the science/engineering, and apply it to conceptualize new tech/solutions that can actually be developed. That's where the actual value is in the so-called "idea man."

[@TheBlueprintsOrlando]

Based. You are brilliant indeed 😆

[@scarpfish]

Visualizing a technological breakthrough goal is easy, and it makes a great sell for potential investors. The processes by which that goal must navigate to go from a visualization to an actualization are another matter.

[@pakde8002]

I don't know, imagining a scam that would fool a lot of so called smart people is pretty impressive.

[@joelspaulding5964]

Indeed. Visualizing how to make it work is genius.

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

Man, I was diagnosed with cancer last year and it gave me a whole new level of anger with Elizabeth Holmes.

[@obfuscatid]

This channel is not only informative, but entertaining as well.

[@scilamaccagno2206]

Oh Joe! We all love you just the way you are!! Thank you once again for all that you do & share with us. Be well.

[@justinahole336]

EH always made me cringe. When the whole thing blew up, I was surprised the investors had been taken like that (no due diligence?!?!...wow!), but her being involved made sense. She always struck me as approaching the uncanny valley from the other direction.

[@justinahole336]

@@BooksRebound Thank you! I was wondering if it would make sense to anyone. I'm glad it did! Enjoy!

[@TheBlueprintsOrlando]

Mind blown by that description

[@justinahole336]

@@TheBlueprintsOrlando Wow! thanks!

[@justsomerandomguy8210]

It’s a good idea (I even doubt she was the first person to come up with the idea) the problem is that the project is impossible with current technology(I hope in the future it may). She scammed the whole world, she said her product could do something and it didn’t. You shouldn’t do this especially in medicine, when you are literally dealing with peoples lives.

[@DavidEvans_dle]

Even her academic advisor told her, it was impossible on that scale do to it breaking the law's of thermal dynamics. In the future, with nano technology it might be possible.

[@JMD501]

Ya capillary blood is different. It would be like saying OMG star trek created warp drives, no it was all smoke and mirrors.

[@nahtesalinas1917]

Right. it's a nice concept.

[@bakedbeings]

She didn't have an idea, she just claimed she'd developed a more efficient product than existed. A car that can drive 10,000km on a drop of petrol isn't an idea, it's just a level of efficiency we can't (yet) achieve.

[@kethmarhkfy7luf.263]

It's a good idea like a mini fusion power plant in every home making free clean energy.

[@uzetaab]

I think the real shame is that they could have just come out with actual products like all the examples Joe gave at the end of the video. "here's the first twelve, we're still working on the other 188." "Here's a different machine that can do 18 different tests." "Buy both machines and we'll give you a discount." Eventually they would have copped criticism for not living up to the promises, but they could have survived that and still had a profitable business.

[@wintermonroe2894]

💯💯

[@ProjectDarkWolf]

I went into this video with such apprehension that the channel had finally gone the route of, "here's a popular story, let's make some memes from it and laugh at how notorious it is". Good job, Joe and crew. Yet again you managed to extract some real world context from an over-explored popular subject that was genuinely informative. And that's more than can be said for every other video I've ever seen about this company!

[@LCTesla]

A lot of what they did was no more outrageous than what the rest of the tech world gets away with; they just did it in an industry and towards clients that didn't have a tolerance for it.

[@TheBelrick]

No doubt that the entire wall street industry is corrupt and above the law. But i personal like how she got away with this crime in the end because she was a woman.

[@mallninja9805]

@@TheBelrick that's an odd way to say "she was convicted of 4 felonies and is currently waiting to be sentenced"

[@TheBelrick]

@@mallninja9805 lol jail is for icky men. She was convicted in January. See a sentence? Does 9 months without a sentence sound normal to you? And it took 4!!! Years to even convict her! Talk about an injustice system revolting against doing its job. She began her crimes in 2003... My guess, they are going to punish a man for her crimes. A scapegoat. Say Rimesh Balwani

[@TheBelrick]

@@mallninja9805 hey i just heard that the sentencing might be today? Is that what prompted you or a massive coincidence

[@TheBelrick]

@@mallninja9805 lol oh look. shes pregnant again. no sentencing AGAIN this year. Eating your words yet?

[@bazoo513]

6:40 - Yes, that's the key question. Did she make all those high-fliers believe in her _delusion_ or was it an eleborate fraud from the start? I am inclined to believe the former, because for a long running fraud, it lacked the end-game part.

[@benjamindover4337]

The guy seduced her, used her into taking the fall and effectively stole the company, handing it over to his big wig pals.

[@JonMartinYXD]

She really hated getting blood tests done (fear of needles) and thought 'surely there has to be a better way'. She went around asking medical faculty what they thought of her idea of doing blood tests with only a drop of blood - that's basically all it was at that point, the idea of 'what if we could do all the tests we need with just a drop of blood?'. All the doctors said it was impossible, because it is, and for some tests it *always will be*. Undeterred (afterall, what do doctors know about medicine) she talked to profs in the School of Engineering who reacted with "Wow yeah, what if we could do that, it would be amazing!" And it was through those engineering profs that she made the connections to venture capitalists who were already believers in the Silicon Valley "disrupt everything" myth. The true root of the problem is deep: anti-intellectualism in America. The venture capitalists should have done their due diligence and consulted medical experts, but they didn't because those experts were part of The Establishment, dinosaurs who don't know that the Silicon Valley comet is going to wipe them out. The engineering profs should have asked "what do the medical doctors say?", but they didn't because in America even experts in one field distrust experts in another field. Holmes should have asked and researched *WHY* the doctors were saying it was impossible, but she didn't because in America anyone's idea is as valid as the knowledge of an expert.

[@bazoo513]

@@JonMartinYXD Well said.

[@benjamindover4337]

@@JonMartinYXD you make it sound like it wasn't just a cash grab by a board of directors who were definitely smart enough to know they could swindle investors and pin it on some naive girl who had no real understanding of what was really happening here.

[@marlonmoncrieffe0728]

While not the most democratic, I admire the near technocracy that is Singapore, @@JonMartinYXD .

[@duncansouthern2255]

Great video as always sir.! X

[@jimwolfgang9433]

seems like ages since one of your vids has popped up, and I'm subbed. anyway, good stuff, great to see ya!

[@retsz]

The barry white joke made me laugh so hard i choked on my coffee. "There's something wrong with me." Lol

[@ilyafleisher]

Great intro skit Joe! This format IS your image and what separates you on KZbin. Love it!

[@jordikostiuk8471]

Joe you should definitely do more more deep dives into some white collar crimes like this one, you explained everything so well and the way you do it is just fantastic.

[@dwaynezilla]

Should have titled this _"Elizabeth Holmes: from Analyzing Blood Cells to Analyzing Prison Cells"_

[@diogenesoliveira6473]

Imagine how tragic it would have been if Theranos had stuck around until COVID

[@me0101001000]

My dad and I are trying to develop something that does what Theranos is trying to do, but it functions purely on electrochemical analysis. He took one look at Theranos, called bullshit, and said that we can do a better job. He's a ChemE professor, and I'm a chem PhD student. But unlike her, in our development, we aren't going to take it to the big name markets. Before we need to convince anyone else, we need to convince the experts. The people at NIH, AMA, ACS, university and medical school professors, really anyone with expertise in liquid biopsy. It's called the Scanning Electrometer for Electrical Double-layers (SEED), if you were curious.

[@magtovi]

Keep going and make the future brighter!

[@me0101001000]

@@magtovi we're trying. The main issue for us is the money, ironically opposite of Holmes. We've published papers on our work, but funding is a difficult task for us.

[@ShaneSemler]

Talk in a deeper voice, and have crazy eyes. Oh, and I hear a black turtleneck shirt does wonders.

[@jackalope2302]

@@ShaneSemler and sleep with a multimillionaire

[@gallanosa]

@@me0101001000 Sadly, EH probably made your job that much harder for you, since they've already been (or have seen others who were) burned once by her. Most wouldn't have the understanding how your technology is fundamentally different from hers (and, hence, feasible!).

[@lara-ce2kg]

No matter how crappy of a day I'm having your skits always crack me up

[@0mn1vore]

The main topic was great, as always, and your choice of sponsor was interesting too. I'd be into hearing more about the nuts&bolts of how you put these videos together, hope other viewers would like it too.

[@NewMateo]

The theranos story just shows how much bs board positions are. I think even the Oracle CEO sat on the Theranos board and made hundreds of thousands from that position yet nothing happened to him or ALL the other tech ceos who gave her legitamacy by sitting on their board.

[@dannybrown5744]

Yeah I want just some of that money...I could pay my taxes

[@Dragrath1]

This is the problem the current system favors and protects the sociopathic conmen who rule at the top of our messed up society at the expense of everyone else

[@bobfatty1035]

CEO to investors, [Jedi mind trick wave] “this [is] the [product] you’re looking for. Move along.” 🤣

[@encyclical]

It’s a cool idea and could be fruitful. But I think over diagnosis is an important concept to consider like Dr Rohin (Medlife Crisis) talks about with Apple Watch heart monitors etc.

[@bazoo513]

This cannot be stressed enough. Thanks for reminding me of that video. For those who don't yet, _do_ follow "Medlife Crisis"!

[@joescott]

Yeah he's got a great channel.

[@u574254]

Joe! Dude I loved the intro video.. as soon as the knob for voice lowering was revealed I was like oh man.. turn it all the way down and antimatter Joe turned it all the way up and ran away ! I was rotfl ! Bravo my friend bravo!

[@DJJ81]

Omg bro that intro was fantastic. Proud of you

[@shannonpincombe8485]

"I mean, you know how nobody respects me round here" "course" not a beat skipped. Best writing in one of your vids right there.

[@WDFJR16345]

It’s just the other company’s are doing it the right way. Like the HBO special said “Fake it until you make it” fits this story perfectly.

[@DarkSnP]

love clone bits very fun way to add to the channel! ik I'm late to it but figured I'd mention you got another viewer who enjoys them!

[@creepyoldlady2995]

Love your T-shirt! I've been correcting people's grammar for 60 years. Fortunately, for the last 50+ years I've been doing it silently.

[@SettlingNomads]

why tf is KZbin meddling with your views and reach? You content is gold, man 😭

[@stephenievee1126]

Impressive how she manages this voice as its way below her natural range. I work in over the phone IT support for many years and I got a quite deep voice for a woman. Not by smoking or anything. Just one of natures gifts, she hands out randomly. My voice is naturally grown, it doesnt appear as strained as Holmes'. Do I receive more credit or appear more confident? Don't know. They say my voice is comforting and warm. Some by accident call me Sir but are quick to be sorry for when I remind them I am not. I am a professional IT and I am confident about that. The voice is how it is. Just a normal blonde in her 40ies with a deeper voice most would expect, doing her work helping others getting along with their tech. Its interesting that way too often the blenders, the misdoers get so much attention and not us normal people that work hard every day to keep the show on the road.

[@gaywizard2000]

I'm glad all women do not talk in reality show voice like every commercial these days! You know like Nik Krolls Publizity.

[@stephenievee1126]

@GayWizard I do not watch TV at all so I so not get your point. But for all I know womens voices are as diverse as there are women. 😉

[@zabnorg]

I'm currently training to become a clinical lab scientist and am familiar with all the tech you just mentioned. Bedside scanners (point of care) are great but most are cartridge based, and those cartridges are expensive. They also generate more medical waste than a big multi-test lab machine like a Siemens Vista, which can do over 100 different tests, many at the same time and using as little as 50 microliters of plasma. The accuracy for point of care machines is often lower than the lab analyzers, however. Antibody-based testing for specific diseases and biomarkers doesn't require much sample but is also expensive and then there's the issue of cross-reactivity. There are companies that make kits containing over 50 target analytes, but these are specific panels that have been engineered to prevent too much of these unwanted cross reactions, and these are only used for research. It would take a great deal of time and money to get FDA approval for just one of these panels, and if you did get approval and wanted to add a different analyte, well, you'd have to go thru the same approval process. The long and the short of it is that anyone who deals with biological samples, especially blood and especially for hospital lab testing should have known this was bs from day one. There's one documentary about Theranos where they interviewed a medical engineering professor that Holmes ran her ideas past, and she basically said the same thing. If you drop out of college because you have something already figured out and want to run with a great idea that's fine, but if Holmes had actually finished her degree maybe she would have learned that the scope and scale she wanted to work with was simply physically impossible at the level of accuracy and precision required by medical testing systems.

[@notmyname327]

Another great video!

[@bujin5455]

I can give you a long list of "brilliant" ideas. Like teleportation. Though perhaps that's abusing the word brilliant. Generally we reserve brilliant for breakthrough ideas, one's that actually breakthrough our current limitations, not just ideas that would be great if we could do them when in fact we can't.

[@DrMackSplackem]

Right. Teleportation isn't brilliant unless it can be demonstrated. The Westinghouse air brake is brilliant.

[@cudaman-yq7pq]

For some reason this story reminds me of John DeLorean. So wrapped up in the initial vision that he would do anything to keep it from going down in flames.

[@BriGuy77711]

I wish you'd have included the clip of Elizabeth Holmes where she momentarily forgets to speak with her Barry White voice. It's hilarious to hear the difference.

[@Good_at_clips]

I love your skits!!!!! Then on top of that I get to learn.

[@DavidEvans_dle]

Would love for someone in the statistical health field, to perform a calculation on how many people Theranos possible killed, with their misdiagnosis. How this company shenanigans flew under the radar for so long. Is perplexing!!

[@Justanotherconsumer]

My understanding is that they ran the tests in parallel on traditional methods “for comparison” and they reported that test.

[@DavidEvans_dle]

@@Justanotherconsumer Yeah sometimes, the problem was initially they didn't have enough of the patient blood samples. So they ran some diluted on other machines. Additional when they got a referral to use the Edison -they would say the results were inconclusive and request to draw a full test sample of blood.

[@parrmik]

apart from a few personality flaws , this women could have been the female ElonMusk.. I mean , does anyone really thnk we are going to have a colony on mars , or the answer to traffic, is underground tunnels.

[@TheMikelKatzengreis]

Super Anfang ...ich habe so gelacht, Danke ! Well done ! Grüße aus Germany

[@jmewalton5674]

I had to get to that first image of Holmes before I got the deep-voice bit. Good one, Joe.

[@intruder313]

It was not genius: plenty of people would have had this idea but took it no further because they found it was impossible. She continued to scam because she’s a scammer.

[@UTubeGuyJK]

I thought it said “THANOS was a dumpster fire” and was expecting a movie review. This wasn’t a movie review :)

[@MarlinMay]

🤣

[@Cloudsurfer69]

opening sketch was bloody epic haha

[@maxdon2001]

Great video!

[@reubenmckay]

We're always going to want faster and easier ways to diagnose diseases and something like Theranos' device is always going to be a Holy Grail. Theranos basically just cashed in on this. Given enough time, resources and research they might have actually managed to develop a device closer to what they claimed.

[@johnfox9169]

She is an intelligent, uneducated person who has deep moral and ethical deficits that hurt many. Now, she's going into prison for, hopefully, a long stretch.

[@nitehawk86]

Don't forget old money rich. She couldn't have pulled this off without daddy's connections.

[@yourinnerlawyer4035]

If she goes to prison it won't be a long one.

[@ronjones-6977]

And nobody said a thing about the "crazy eyes" and that voice? Ya, she comes across as totally normal.

[@pupyfan69]

something tells me these big name finance journalists wouldn't be spouting off about how immoral she is if she'd found a novel way to hoodwink poor people. i mean after all, thats a sizable chunk of their readership

[@laurapenhallegon6843]

I just wanna say that my sister worked at your sponsor Storyblocks so I was excited to hear that you were promoting it haha anyways great video as always Joe

[@Rice_peace]

Acceptable ad, pretty interesting. Thanks Joe.

[@HighExplosiveSerenade]

10:12 I don't know if its a joke or something, but I believe it should be SIEMENS, not SIEMANS... Don't get me wrong; awesome video as always Joe! You and your team are the best! :)

[@JackHiper]

Her idea was no different than having an idea for a car that can drive from NY to LA on a thimble of fuel. Sure it would be amazing but always impossible.

[@CJ2023Incognito]

Electric cars?

[@mrkevinp70]

I'm pretty current on most of your videos Joe... This one made me laugh unusually more... Watching it again... 🙂

[@iamdeepsea]

Wow Scott, great ad

[@HarryNicNicholas]

somewhere back in the early 90's i did a series of animated videos for a company run by two women that claimed to have invented a device that was basically a sealed box you kept in your basement, that you filled up with !something! that was a secret, and it generated electricty that not only powered your house, but you could sell back to the grid. it sounded like a fake, but the two women running things seemed to believe sincerely in the product, claimed to have patents and backing and it sounded more convincing than not, until i made a third video for them that for some reason they didn't like - it was pretty similar to the first two except the graphics were hand drawn instead of clip art. about a year after i gave up chasing them for my fee (!) one of them contacted me and told me the whole thing had gone down the tubes, it was not only fake but a copy of an existing fake that had ended badly, and that she was sorry i'd got involved. there must be dozens of similar scams going on, and i get the feeling the bigger the numbers, the more sucked in people can become.

[@elha7982]

Can you upload these videos or would there be legal issues? Sounds interesting to watch in hindsight

[@greezooo]

What was the secret ingredient? Gas?the mystery basement box sounds like a regular gas generator.

[@RoseSharon7777]

Anyone who has worked in a lab knew this was a scam.

[@panagiotiskevopoulos]

Those intros are hilarious. Keep up the great work Joe 👍

[@freighttrain7143]

The opener was great. Actually when we opened with the intro music and then just you drinking coffee, I was expecting you to shoo us away 'Nope! Not yet! GO AWAY, COFFEE TIME HERE!' *_Another opener music with you ready to rock at your desk_* "OK Yeah now is fine" lol

[@wolfiemuse]

So I guess I’m missing the part where it was “Genius, actually” as the thumbnail suggests. The dream to be able to do more with less is always good, but I don’t feel like she or her team were particularly genius in any way. Maybe at defrauding the public? 😅 and really they weren’t even that great at it because they got caught. So to me it feels like she had a good dream at the start but then refused to take responsibility for her claims being wrong and actively tried to hide them, which in my opinion is just as bad as people who spread mis- and disinformation about scientific facts. It really hurts the entire world (particularly the US’s) trust in science which is already hurting right now.

[@rokasrerroca7399]

I wish Jim Carrey would do a parody of her on SNL...would be hilarious!

[@ykkfamily]

I've seen it and nobody should should look at it for too long 😂😂😂 keep the funnies coming. Also intro was great!

[@allissondiego1989]

That cold intro was very good.

[@jackvalior]

The thing that piss me off about these sort of story is that she ruined the image of such machine for future investor, slowing down progress for everyone involved. Much like Nikola truck, hydrogen engine tech is view with cynicism because of them

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

Just about every human endeavour has its frauds. Back in early days of colonial expansionism some frauds made up continents out of whole cloth to bilk investors. The Dot-Com bubble of the late 1990s was full of money-burning fictions. I fully expect we’ll see climate change fixes that are nothing more than words and CGI. Space ventures are going to come with tons of frauds. But on the bright side there are going to be many who do the actual hard work and pull humanity forward.

[@hollygolden9673]

Never underestimate crazy eyes.

[@AdventureSeekersTV]

6:06 THAT STARE

[@raggedclawstarcraft6562]

I know right?

[@niko2239]

That intro was gold :D

[@TheTarrMan]

Holmes was just another crazy visionary. She overestimated her power of will-power. Something this big needs more time. Coming out in stages was the better strategy.

[@DFX2KX]

You know, just the common Glucometer (blood-sugar meter for the unaware) is a freakin' MARVEL. I have one (three of them, actually) when I started actively trying to prevent the onset of diabetes (which I succeeded in doing fortunately, loosing 130ish pounds was a nice side-effect). Here's a device that costs like $30 even without insurance, and a $0.50-a-pop disposable test that can tell you with reasonable accuracy something that required a lab up until the 70's when they where invented, and the new ones are cheap enough that I buy extra strips on my own *just because* (seeing how much sugar is effected from a workout was enlightening. yours truly now walks ~5 miles a day)

[@petraarkian7720]

Omg yes. People so completely underestimate how incredible so much medical technology is, and how much these innovations change the lives of those of us that live with them. I have a port a cath and studied engineering and I am constantly impressed by the little inventions that go into everything from line caps to needle guard designs.

[@claireradke7029]

Hey Joe, you should have more conversations with yourself in your skits. They are funny. Every once in a while "...or 'bollock' or whatever it is you people say" will pop into my head and that makes me happy.

[@WillfulGirl07]

That intro haha, brilliantly done!