The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press

Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by w1ntermute on Monday May 02, 2016 @05:23PM (#11615777)

There's a whole lot of people who want there to be a successful female entrepreneur so badly that they're willing to give a rising star the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't help that most members of this cheerleading squad seem to have little more than a middle school level understanding of physics or biology, and no desire to dive into the science before heaping praise on the charlatan of the hour.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by untog on Monday May 02, 2016 @05:32PM (#11615843)

I really think the "woman issue" is tangential at best, and distracting at worst. The simple fact is that a good deal of tech "journalism" consists of rewriting PR pieces and very little more.

Investigative tech journalism is a very rare beast, and always seems to come from major media outlets taking an interest in tech, not tech media outlets taking an interest in actually investigating something.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by mnky9800n on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @05:53PM (#11624541)

I would imagine this is because its rather boring to most readers. Good investigative tech journalism often just looks like Tom's hardware or anandtech. Page after page of technical specifications and comparisons to similar products.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by tryitnow on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:12PM (#11616863)

Meh. Same things would have happened if it was a stereotypical founder. I think being female is tangential.

Look, fraud and deception have been around for much longer than political correctness.

The female angle is definitely a cherry on top, but it's not the substance of the shit sundae served up by Theranos.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by duaneb on Monday May 02, 2016 @06:22PM (#11616203)

There already are successful female entrepreneurs. I don't see them as linked to the bad press so much as the absolutely massive amount of money sunk in the company.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by mbesto on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:04PM (#11616836)

I think w1ntermute's point is that ubeam, like theranos, if working as advertised has the potential to become an ultra successful company. It's not just about having another good company started by a woman...but more about a game changing technology company founded by a woman.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by w1ntermute on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:16PM (#11616887)

Yes, exactly.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by duaneb on Monday May 02, 2016 @08:52PM (#11617035)

I still don't see the tie to sex/gender. Yes, it's a compelling angle, but I don't see it dominating the offering as interesting. Theranos has been pitched as revolutionary without even mentioning the founder--I only learned about her long after the skepticism hit hard.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by gozur88 on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:55PM (#11617515)

The attractive, charismatic female founder is what makes the story irresistible to the press. There still would have been Theranos stories in the business press if the founder had been a middle-aged guy, but the number of stories would have been smaller and the adulation would have been less.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by eecsninja on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:54PM (#11617795)

Holmes is not attractive.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by w1ntermute on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:24PM (#11617383)

> Theranos has been pitched as revolutionary without even mentioning the founder

That is false. Almost every profile of Theranos doubles as a profile of Elizabeth, complete with photo shoots of her in her signature black turtleneck (after all, there is no actual technology to be shown) and the statement that she's the youngest self-made female billionaire.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by enraged_camel on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @12:05AM (#11617839)

The black turtleneck itself is no accident or coincidence. It's a carefully calculated wardrobe choice meant to invoke images of the late Steve Jobs.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by slavik81 on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @02:00AM (#11618276)

I think you may have meant evoke: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/evoke.html

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by jondubois on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @05:15AM (#11619029)

Yes, there was a time briefly where the topic of 'Diversity' was the only thing the media talked about. It seems that the media sometimes get caught up in their own hype.

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Re:The Secret Culprit in the Theranos Mess Is the Tech Press by chrischen on Monday May 02, 2016 @09:40PM (#11617217)

The problem with this indiscriminate propping up of women is that it doesn't work, or else we'd be doing this for everyone. But we live in a mostly meritocratic society because that system is better than indiscriminate merit.

So while they indiscriminately endorse any women, the women who merit endorsement more will inevitably be disenfranchised more.

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