The point I was making was that it was irrelevant how the original designs were intended - if Theranos had been able to successfully reverse engineers the tests, and determine a way to make them work reliably, while it would have made those of us who believed Theranos had some incredible new technology, and that Elizabeth Holmes was the next coming, no patients need to have been concerned. It was the fact that the tests were unreliable, that made Theranos guilty.

Lying about it to the Investors, and possible intellectual/contract issues with Siemens are another issue.

Yeah, I think we're actually in agreement here. Sometimes I think about how, if Theranos had figured out how to make things work over the last year before the WSJ article, all of their horrible and unethical practices would have been swept under the rug even if they were essentially lying for years to investors and patients.

Unfortunately, it turns out that "fake it til you make it" doesn't work with some problems that are seemingly unsolvable (at least by the approach they took).

> Unfortunately, it turns out that "fake it til you make it" doesn't work with some problems that are seemingly unsolvable (at least by the approach they took).

IOW, it turns out that "fake it til you make it" doesn't work if you don't actually make it.

> It was the fact that the tests were unreliable, that made Theranos guilty.

Very few tests are 100% reliable, so I would expect that Theranos claims about how the tests where performed would play a significant role in determining the guilt. People where told they would get the perfect magic pixy dust test that worked on one drop of blood instead they got one of the early covid tests that needed at least four repeats to give a "most likely negative" result, unsurprisingly the covid tests also resulted in confused tweets by the one or other VC.

Well - some of the tests have to be 100% reliable, because medication decisions are made on them, and the incorrect dosage can be harmful. It's not like a cheap $10 antigen tests that has sub 100% specificity and sensitivity - a bunch of the tests were trying to measure particular levels. Theranos was just overall horrible. They were trying to do some tests that were impossible based on the physics of what can be measured by pinprick blood.