I was already pretty suspcious of Theranos and then I talked to the VC I was advising. They said their alarms were tripped when Theranos didn't agree to sign any NDAs when talking about their tech, so the VC sent a junior partner to a walgreens to get the test. While being tested, they noticed it was a blood draw (the whole point of the test was that it didn't need to be a blood draw) and realized theranos was just farming out the tests to conventional equipment.

RThey were already "found out" well before the articles were published, it's just that most VC aren't going to go out of their way to tank you, they just decline to invest