There's a big difference between "fake it till you make it" and "crime it till you climb it". You can have blind faith in your product, but you can't lie just lie about your business constantly in the hope that maybe one day your lies will be true.
Your mistake is in conflating "successful business" and "fraud." It was not a successful business until the collapse, it was a successful fraud. In this way, I believe you're promoting a poor ethical standard, one that valorizes crime as long as you get away with it.
You can declare that kind of religiosity unethical, but it comes off sounding slightly disingenuous when that kind of religiosity was instrumental in forming the ethical foundations of western civilization.
The traditional religions, of course, aren't super compatible with the modern world and we're moving away from them. Still, people need things to believe in as much as they ever did so it shouldn't be surprising that non-traditional religions such as Musk or Theranos will emerge.
With the most deeply held beliefs it's essential that they can never be proven true, because they'll stop being beliefs and become facts, which don't serve the intended purpose. For Theranos to fulfill it's mission, that blood testing device can never materialize.
For most startups it's about having blind faith that an idea can be turned into a meaningful service or product. With Theranos blind faith is the product, and it's the most meaningful product of all.
The key to building and idea is to ensuring the resources are there to build it, not to kill it while it’s still in the idea phase. No one ever became the founder of a billion dollar company by being cynical early on.
And sure you might think that you save yourself from “wasting 5 years of your life”. It my experience is that founders who work 5 years on establishing a vc backed company that ultimately fail just walk straight on to another leadership role in another company, and they had a great sallery and job for those five years, so what is really wasted?