You're not going to find many defenders of Theranos at this point, but that doesn't mean this isn't a bad comment to post to HN. We ask users here to post reflective comments, not ones that try to maximize fury—no matter how right you are or how angry you feel. The fact that you end your comment with a cheap slur about "more civilized countries" is indicative.

Dang, I appreciate where you're coming from, and understand your sentiment. However, as a pathologist, and having sworn to defend the US Constitution for over 20 years, and having visited a number of the countries he mentioned, I'm inclined to not disagree with the poster. And I am inclined to suggest that killing people for profit is the best single basis for righteous fury.

Inflaming indignation like that isn't righteous. It's a mob behavior, not much different whether the target is guilty or innocent. It's just more socially acceptable when the target is (or is seen as) guilty.

Group rage is good for bonding a community—as Phil Ochs once put it, "the family that slays together stays together"—but that's not the kind of community we want HN to be. Indeed, how we react to situations where someone is (or is seen as) obviously guilty is a good measure of how well we're holding to that standard.

I realize the above may sound counterintuitive, but consider that the comments we get are the best predictor of what we'll get more of. Do we want more of those? The dynamic they lead to is people one-upping each other with fiery denunciations and getting ever more reflexive. We can't have both that and reflective discourse, and we want reflective discourse, including about bad things.

In my estimation (I'd like to be wrong!) righteous fury adds nothing to the pursuit of insight. And, again in my estimation,[0] we'll better distribute justice if we stay unbiased and seek to understand the situation.

The people at Theranos, especially the wrongdoers, probably want to be and feel understood. I think that's a step toward insight and justice.

Maximizing fury (I love the turn of phrase) makes people defensive, which aborts the insight-pursuit.

[0] Sorry to use so many qualifiers. Because I'm telling people how they should talk, I want to be as precise as possible.

I think mucking up blood tests that almost certainly lead to misdiagnoses should stir up some fury.

Stirring up some is not the same as optimizing for.

I really don't see how this is 'optimising' over stirring up fury. What are your metrics?

The "civilized countries" snark at the end was pointless and annoying, I agree. But still, I'm not sure why knowingly swindling ordinary people should be anything other than criminal, whether it's done in the guise of a medical service or as a simple street con. There were people in Theranos who knew exactly what was going on, knew the human cost of it, had the power to stop it, and still pushed forward. How are they better than any common thief?

>I'm not sure why knowingly swindling ordinary people should be anything other than criminal

We (or, to speak for myself, I) should understand:

how often does fraud happen in this industry as compared to others

what causes it

whether it's stoppable once started, and whether other companies have stopped when they've started

how different are kinds of fraud in companies

These example questions are statistical. I'd so much rather spend time getting a statistical picture of the situation than maximize fury against one bad actor. I think "blaming people"--as a way of conversing--is low-quality dialogue. This is how I agree with dang that the above comment is not what I'd like to see on hn.

I like Japan but I'm not sure you should hold it out here as an example of good corporate behavior: http://scmp.com/business/companies/article/1880094/partial-t...

IIRC a number of Japan's corporations still work fairly closely with the Yakuza, don't they?

Yes, even politicians.

Fortunately we have a system of law and not based on outrage.

I agree that Theranos's leadership belongs in jail.

But I think it's worth reflecting a bit on how much our community created and benefits from the tech-genius hype cycle that they exploited. On how much we have supported a mythos that our cutting-edge innovations can't be judged by existing stick-in-the-mud regulators.

I'm not saying that those are entirely bad things. But it's worth remembering that Theranos couldn't have happened without Silicon Valley. If we want to keep the latitude we've been given, maybe should be more vigorous about policing the people making use of it.

I don't think that's "our community". It certainly isn't my community. I believe (and hope) that the delusional libertarian wing of the entrepreneurial class, who believe that regulation has no place in a market, is a fringe element.

The "no regulation faction" is fighting hard to get out of its corner. A few days ago, Jessica Flanigan (https://sites.google.com/site/jessicamflanigan/Research), an anti-FDA medicine ethicist at the University of Richmond, made the rounds on this very board. She shows how this group is trying to get its ideas accepted by the mainstream.

Note that she is housed at a philosophy department! Physicians are trained to put patient outcomes first. If she were invited to speak at any medical school she would be torn to pieces. She wouldn't have any good answers how her positions would help prevent Elixir Sulfanilamide or now Theranos. The medical school I am associated with is in the South, in a conservative town, and she wouldn't fare well here. But I guess at a conservative philosophy department they don't ask that kind of hard questions.

We need to fight to keep the libertarian fringe confined.

That's a little no-true-scotsman for my tastes. I don't like those people either. But it's hard to say that those people are not part of the Silicon Valley startup community, or the Hacker News community.

Pretty sure most libertarians are ok with regulations when they involve possibly causing harm to someone's body or laying hands on someone's body or property, and fraud. This case hits two of those concerns.

Not from what I've seen posted here. Hopefully that is a very fringe group that's just very vocal.

What does their blood test tech not working have to do with regulators?

Regulators allow only blood tests that work.

>The Theranos leadership belongs in jail

Let's ensure that actual crimes have been committed before we go throwing people in jail.

Perhaps civil forfeiture? Because apparently it is okay to do it to individuals.

Let's not legitimize that behavior.

More seriously, could one of Theranos' large minority shareholders (successfully) sue to freeze their assets, keeping any cash liquid? How bad of shape does a company need to be in before that becomes viable?