[HN Gopher] Theranos devices ran "null protocol" to skip actual ...
___________________________________________________________________
Theranos devices ran "null protocol" to skip actual demo for
investors
Author : intunderflow
Score : 48 points
Date : 2021-10-20 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Ads for new phones typically read "Screen images simulated". No
| one should blame Theranos for using carefully configured images
| in their marketing brochures - if the graphic designer used
| actual photos at all instead of CAD renders and simulated
| screenshots, you'd expect them to clear a fault or get a passing
| test before hitting the shutter. If there were some machines
| visible from the front lobby, if they were live and just running
| "demo mode" that's basically the same as putting a sticker with a
| passing test over the display.
|
| I give Apple a ton of credit for running with real demos, as
| shown by the fact that they fail, like the FaceID snafu:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/12/16296912/a...
|
| Or Steve Jobs' wifi disconnection:
|
| https://www.cnet.com/videos/steve-jobs-demo-fail/
|
| A lot of Apple demos include simulated marketing screen sequences
| too, but if they had 'lip synced' these parts I don't think
| anyone would have noticed. Clearly, they didn't, or else those
| two failures would not have happened.
|
| Regardless, I don't think Theranos running a "null protocol" or
| "demo mode" is particularly surprising. You can't blame them for
| wanting to avoid something like the machine blurting out "You Are
| HIV Positive" during a demo. I do think there's a difference
| between a marketing demo where you expect to be lied to and a
| "this is a standard production machine running an actual test"
| lie. The question is which side of that divide the Theranos
| investor demos fell on.
| unsui wrote:
| Fun fact:
|
| Steve Jobs' demo for the original macintosh was actually done
| with a bit of cheating:
|
| "Once we integrated all the pieces together, the demo didn't
| come close to be able to run on a standard Macintosh.
| Fortunately, we had a prototype of a 512K Mac in the lab, so we
| decided to cheat a little (there were only two in existence at
| the time) and use that for the demo, which made things fit."
|
| https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I'd have a lot more sympathy for this argument if the Theranos
| machines were actually capable of doing the tests that they
| were pretending to run.
|
| I think there's a world of difference between a) simulating a
| technology that a company really can provide just to ensure
| that things run smoothly for the test and b) pretending to
| offer a technology that, in fact, the company couldn't provide
| at all.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It depends on what you are demonstrating. I recently worked on
| a very legit medical device. It has a demo mode that shows off
| the product UI. It is 100% clear that there is no real sample
| and no real reagents in the machine.
|
| Note the article said the demo mode "would not analyze the
| sample." The article goes on to say that real blood samples
| were used in these demos. Not the same thing at all.
| RyJones wrote:
| yes? they're a terrible company run by terrible people.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| were
| fernandotakai wrote:
| and thank god for that. can you imagine theranos doing covid
| tests?
| mhh__ wrote:
| I won't name names in case I'm wrong but there are
| apparently some cowboy companies doing exactly this in the
| UK.
|
| Huge numbers of contracts were outsourced with no review to
| anyone available (read: nepotism) with a phone number.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| So just as accurate as corona tests.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| I don't see any massive red flags in the stuff reported.
|
| I'm convinced based on what I know that Theranos engaged in
| deliberate fraud. But fraud is more than the sum of promotional
| practices that can be taken retrospectively or without context as
| sign of wrongdoing.
|
| Having scripted demos that hide error messages is not really
| sketchy. It could be part of a fraud, or it could not, but it's
| not really telling.
|
| I say this because we often see popular ethical judgements where
| it's made out that there is a clear line between good and bad and
| that because the key players were unethical, they just did a
| bunch of bad things. I don't see it that way. There are lots of
| individual small judgements, most of which could be completely
| benign, but that add up to a fraud in the bigger picture. It
| probably makes sense as part of a body of evidence in a trial,
| but it's not really as sensational as the tabloids would like it
| to be.
|
| Incidentally, I think that Theranos and Enron are basically the
| same story (at least Bad Blood and The Smartest Guys in the Room
| are the same book). And the root cause in both is not direct lack
| of scruples, but believing that ideas are what's important and
| execution doesn't matter. The lesson to me, is that a good way to
| get into trouble you cant get out of (and both of these stories
| resulted in real people taking their lives) is to think that
| details don't matter and a good idea is all you need.
| outworlder wrote:
| Hiding error messages is one thing.
|
| What about showcasing devices that pretended to work but then
| shipping the tests to be run in normal labs?
| dfsegoat wrote:
| > What about showcasing devices that pretended to work but
| then shipping the tests to be run in normal labs?
|
| They didn't even have any basic systems validation / quality
| management documentation, which is how they racked up their
| first FDA inspection violations.
|
| This really should have been obvious to anyone doing due
| diligence in a regulated space (devices, pharma, etc.).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| While the behavior is atrocious IMHO, the article doesn't say
| the tests were run in 'normal labs':
|
| > the actual test would be run in a lab away from prying eyes
|
| That lab could have been using a Theranos machine, but with
| errors displayed, etc.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| These kinds of responses infuriate me. I also get so frustrated
| by so much of the media taking the line of "This was just
| Silicon Valley's 'Fake it til you make it' culture taken to the
| extreme."
|
| Nonsense. I've worked in startups my entire 20+ year career,
| and while we've certainly spun or promoted things to the
| extreme, the line of "outright lying" was never gray.
|
| Take for example the initial iPhone demo by Steve Jobs. It's
| been mentioned many times before that the demo had to be run in
| a specific, exact order, or else the OS would crash. That's
| fine, but _nothing_ in those demos were faked. It all did
| exactly what he demoed, live. It would have been a much
| different story, if, for example, Jobs just demoed a video with
| surreptitious pause and play buttons. _That_ would have been
| fraud, and that 's much less than what Theranos faked here.
| goldcd wrote:
| I think having scripted demos that hide error messages is
| sketchy, if you're representing the demo as "being your
| product". You're saying "this is my product" and you're showing
| something that "isn't your product".
|
| Doesn't mean I'm against demos - but normally you can come up
| with a slice (or two if you're lucky) through it that genuinely
| works and shows for a representative scenario (and if your
| arm's twisted you just say that with more money, you can
| support more scenarios).
| rtkwe wrote:
| They were telling investors the tests were actually running on
| machines though which is factually untrue and were lying in
| materials sent to investors about the testing done on devices
| and the validation of those tests. This is far more than just
| having a narrow slice demo and saying "this is a demo of what X
| will be like." What they were doing was directly lying about
| what the machines were doing and what they were capable of
| doing, beyond just lying to investors they pushed it out to the
| public using shoddy validation techniques which gave people
| incorrect test results.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Having scripted demos that hide error messages is not really
| sketchy. It could be part of a fraud, or it could not, but it's
| not really telling.
|
| They pricked investors fingers and implied that a Theranos
| machine would process the sample, but then they secretly ran
| the sample on a competitor's machine in another room:
|
| > In demos of the company's technology, investors would have
| their fingers pricked for testing alongside one of Theranos'
| proprietary devices, but the actual test would be run in a lab
| away from prying eyes.
|
| This would be the equivalent of a SaaS company setting up an
| API that just passed the calls through to a competitor's API,
| but then telling investors that their own platform was
| operational. You can run the pass-through API long enough to
| fake demos and raise money, but it's still fraud if you mislead
| investors to believe that you have the platform operational.
|
| They weren't just hiding error messages or smoothing over rough
| edges. They were architecting fraudulent claims to investors.
| eli wrote:
| Pretty sure a non-zero number of AI/ML startups were actually
| just feeding data to humans, at least at the start.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "At least at the start" is possibly ok if you have a path
| forward to get to your goal. Theranos had no path.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| You may do scripted demos or avoiding problematic errors. But
| usually you will have some kind of path to get where you want
| to be.
|
| From what I have read Theranos had nothing. They had no idea
| how they could make their machines work. There was no new
| technology or new insight. They just lied blatantly.
|
| That's on a different level from the usual cheating people do
| at demos.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The Germans would call this schadenfreude to the founder of Fox
| News perhaps:
|
| Meanwhile, investors were given binders that made hyperbolic
| claims about Theranos' diagnostic technology. One binder sent to
| media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who invested $125 million, said,
| "Theranos offers tests with the highest level of accuracy." The
| company's technology, it also said, "generates significantly
| higher integrity data than currently possible."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-20 23:00 UTC)