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Theranos was worth $700 million

I think that was perhaps the "book" value. But:

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Forbes named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of Theranos.[4] -Wikipedia

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JedRothwell It depends what you call a "large" fraud or con and how it qualifies to be in tech. You seem to be woefully ignorant of it even in your own field! For example: https://www.fraud.org/tech_scams or https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Modern_frauds_in_science There was also a weird scammer who claimed IIRC, wide band high speed transmission of signals over simple wire. Another made the same claim for a very narrow FM channel, again IIRC. Unknown to the marks, they actually used a hidden coaxial cable, which in one case, even went across or under a river. There have been so many scams since that I can't even find the classic one because my searches are swamped by more modern examples.

Perhaps you meant billion dollar corporations based on tech scams like Theranos? I agree those are rare. But there are innumerable tech scams on any scale -- up to very large ones.

ETA: OK... one of the scammers I was thinking about was Madison Priest:

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In 1994, one Madison Priest, then a resident of Palatka, Florida, demonstrated a bit of technology that has the potential to change the world. He was a forty-something high-school dropout who had worked for Martin Marietta. Using technology he claimed to be derived from low-energy or zero point physics, he had invented a device which could send data over ordinary phone lines at 1,000 times the current standard. He could play video on one computer and transmit it seamlessly to another 1/2 a mile across a river over the phone. "He had a Holy Grail that was the telecommunications equivalent of cold fusion," an investment banker commented.

see for Madison Priest (scroll down): http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/05-21-02.htm

Quote from seven_of_twenty

JedRothwellIt depends what you call a "large" fraud or con and how it qualifies to be in tech. You seem to be woefully ignorant of it even in your own field! For example: https://www.fraud.org/tech_scams or https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Modern_frauds_in_science

I was talking about large corporations, not scientific research. Theranos was a business fraud. There have been countless small business frauds, but very few on the scale of Theranos or Miniscribe.

No one would call the failed dot-com companies such as Pets.com or Juicero a fraud. They were mistakes, not fraud.

I think it is unfair to include Wakefield in the list of scientific frauds. As far as I know, he sincerely believes his results.

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Enron and International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC) come to mind [as frauds].

Good point. No doubt there are others. There have also been many large companies that engaged in dubious or illegal stock manipulation and things like that. Volkswagen covered up manipulation of their emissions data. However, the actual business these companies were engaged in was legitimate, and their products were real, not bricks being shipped instead of hard disks.

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Theranos was a business fraud.

That's hard to say. Elizabeth Holmes is a strange person and her true motivations, if she had any that made sense, aren't known. But certainly a part of it was high tech fraud. The company took in blood samples to be processed by their revolutionary new low sample size method. But the samples were either botched by the Theranos device, which never worked, or they were done by conventional methods and the company pretended that they had been done by the new "technology." In my book, that's high tech fraud. Later on, there was financial fraud as well because investor funds were spent for high living and mismanagement and books were cooked and so on. So Thernanos represented two types of fraud. And some people really believe that Holmes was and maybe still is delusional and really thought she could pull off the development of a real functional ultra-micro ultra-versatile human blood analyzer. So that's an additional dimension to this sad story.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

But the samples were either botched by the Theranos device, which never worked, or they were done by conventional methods and the company pretended that they had been done by the new "technology."

It is a gray area. The devices worked to some extent. There were many talented engineers and scientists in the company, and they made real progress. Not enough to justify all the money they spent, but it wasn't all fake by any means.

If it is a crime to make machines that don't work, and products unfit for the market, I and many others belong in prison.

Misrepresenting the performance of the Theranos gadgets, and claiming they were used for analyses when actually other machines were used . . . that is definitely business fraud. However, making machines that you sincerely hope will work as new technology, but mostly failing to accomplish your goals, is not a crime.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Of course not! Who said it was? That's just another Rothwell Straw Man.

Actually that is you, leaving out my first sentence. You say the same thing I said, and you claim I disagree with what I just said:

"Misrepresenting the performance of the Theranos gadgets, and claiming they were used for analyses when actually other machines were used . . . that is definitely business fraud."

You have a problem with that? Is there something there you actually disagree with, or are you just making trouble and being disagreeable?

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You have a problem with that? Is there something there you actually disagree with

As I said very carefully, it is unclear what the nature of the fraud at Theranos was. The courts will soon try to sort it out unless it is settled out of court.

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, or are you just making trouble and being disagreeable?

Far be it for me to infringe on your specialty.

Quote from JedRothwell

or are you just making trouble and being disagreeable?

No .. its the dopamine rush

Quote from seven_of_twenty

As I said very carefully, it is unclear what the nature of the fraud at Theranos was.

I read the book. It seems pretty clear to me what the nature of the headlined fraud was. It was mostly a business fraud. They were hiding bad news from the stockholders, and misrepresenting and exaggerating their accomplishments. Management lied about the capabilities of the technology. There were also violations of medical procedures. No one disputes that is fraud.

My point is that along with this fraud, there were honest efforts to develop new technology, and some of these efforts bore fruit. It did not work well for many reasons. The project management was terrible, with too many secrets. The biggest problem was that a major goal of the project was impossible, according to many experts. You cannot do the analyses on a single drop of blood taken from the fingertip for two reasons: 1. The sample is not large enough; 2. It is contaminated when it comes through the skin. It has to be taken directly from the bloodstream into the collection vessel, through a hypodermic needle. My understanding of the book is that this was an honest technical mistake, not a deliberate effort to deceive or defraud people. Scientists worked for years on this, and many of those scientists are still considered honest experts who were not trying to deceive anyone.

You are right there were some gray areas. Some of what transpired might have been a mistake, or it might have been fraud. The courts will have to decide. Their management was so sloppy, I wonder if it was deliberately bad. They should have consulted with more experts. They should have opened their devices up to third-party testing. They should have had leading hematologists on the Board. When people make that many mistakes, it begins to look like deliberate fraud. Maybe it was?

Sorry, this is OTC, maybe admins will move the discussion?

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The project management was terrible, with too many secrets. The biggest problem was that a major goal of the project was impossible, according to many experts. You cannot do the analyses on a single drop of blood taken from the fingertip for two reasons: 1. The sample is not large enough; 2. It is contaminated when it comes through the skin. It has to be taken directly from the bloodstream into the collection vessel, through a hypodermic needle.

That's not completely accurate. Whether the sample is large enough or not depends on what is tested for and what techniques are available. The latter changes all the time. When you can use various DNA systems, particularly PCR variants, the sample size is down to barely visible. Same for immuno or electro-immuno assays and also some radio isotope testing. Eventually, many if not most of current lab tests will done those ways but of course that is not now the case. As to contaminants, you can clean skin pretty well. And of course, needles used to acquire blood from veins have to go through skin unless you know a magical way to get the tip into a vein. So I don't think that's generally an issue. The issue was that there were not the claimed one thousand tests which could be done on micro samples of blood. There may have been a few dozen, some quite rarely requested.

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My understanding of the book is that this was an honest technical mistake, not a deliberate effort to deceive or defraud people. Scientists worked for years on this, and many of those scientists are still considered honest experts who were not trying to deceive anyone.

There were definitely a lot of honest people aat Theranos, Probably most of the employees who worked for Theranos were completely honest. Theranos kept technical people isolated from the whole picture and working on small isolated projects. It was said this was for security but the obvious real reason was to prevent them from grasping the scam. One whistleblower in the TV documentary was Tyler Shulz, grandson of George Shultz. The senior Shultz held 4 different cabinet posts under Reagan and invested and promoted Theranos. Tyler Shultz made it crystal clear that Holmes and Sunny Balwani were knowing and purposeful conspirators in a bald faced scam. George Shultz was sincere and didn't know the scam.

There is no question the scam was premeditated on the part of Holmes and Balwani -- in fact that's why they are being criminally prosecuted. Perhaps it didn't start that way but it soon evolved in that direction. There is no question that Holmes is a sociopath and may have other emotional disorders. There is no question Balwani is a crook. This is all from the video documentary, it is not my own original idea, LOL.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

There is no question that Holmes is a sociopath

No more so than Steve Jobs..

but I don't have the DSM diagnosis for sociopath handy..

perhaps psychiatry rather than LENR is SOT's forte?

Oh c'mon. DSM is not hard to find.

BTW:

Currently, sociopath is a sub-category of antisocial personality disorders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…cial_personality_disorder

You conjecture about my "forte?" It's detecting bullsh*t. Or the high probability that a claim is bullsh*t. I have a pretty good record for doing it correctly. I don't recall ever calling out a scam that turned out to be a valid product, claim or technology. How's your call out record for scams and frauds in tech?

BTW, are you defending Holmes, Balwani and Theranos? You ought to talk to their victims first. About a billion dollars' worth of personal and institutional losses.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

You conjecture about my "forte?" It's detecting bullsh*t. Or the high probability that a claim is bullsh*t.

In the field of cold fusion you are not good at that. You have only detected Rossi, who is impossible to miss. Perhaps in other fields you have detected bullshit.

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That's not completely accurate. Whether the sample is large enough or not depends on what is tested for and what techniques are available. . . .

I wouldn't know about that. I am just describing what the book said. It said that for many of the tests, it is not possible to use small samples, so they had to dilute the sample to increase the amount of liquid.

Quote from JedRothwell

In the field of cold fusion you are not good at that.

In lenr forum self diagnosis of self evident BS eludes SOT everyday

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You have only detected Rossi, who is impossible to miss.

Seriously, you have to stop doing that. I almost dropped my diet pepsi in my lap, I was laughing so hard.