I am not arguing for innocence or that no evidence exists. My observation is that most people who are claiming a certainty about guilt, and indeed motivations, have not looked at sufficient material to be certain in their claims.
I'm prepared to accept the courts ruling, but that is a far stretch from the confidence required to make the declarations of guilt that people seem compelled to post any time the matter comes up.
Most of the claims I have seen seem to declare more than the courts found.
I'm not annoyed with the court findings or even particularly invested in them.
The thing that irritates me is the comments declaring opinions that they have obviously taken from a few new stories which are likely appropriately cautious with their claims, and inflating them in their minds to be an absolute fact that must be shouted at people whenever the topic comes up.
If people were contentious enough to read the court transcripts and examine the exhibits before commenting I have misjudged them.
I have seen plenty of people in my time who have strongly asserted guilt of someone after reading a few news stories before the person was exonerated. I am not claiming such a exoneration is due or likely here, just this pattern of reciting a narrative at high amplitude does little good for anyone.
The current instance in Britain is Lucy Letby. She has the distinction of having random internet commenters declare absolute certainty of both guilt and innocence in roughly equal measures.
On your earlier question about how far from working the machines were, the clearest answer is Holmes's own, on cross-examination by prosecutor Robert Leach (Day 40, November 30, 2021):
> Leach: The miniLab and the 4 Series were never used for patient testing; is that correct?
> Holmes: That's right.
> Leach: And the Edison 3.5 was only used for 12 assays in the California CLIA lab between September 2013 and June of 2015; is that correct?
> Holmes: I believe so, that's correct.
> Leach: So Theranos wasn't using any of its manufactured analyzers in the CLIA lab at the time that the CMS inspectors come in?
> Holmes: Correct.
https://holmes.courtdaemon.com/trial/day/40/elizabeth-a-holm...
When I first heard of this company trying to do something that didn't appear to be physically or biologically possible I just assumed it would fizzle out eventually. Good for them if they find people willing to fund their reach for the stars. We need those!
Then the publicity came. I found the navel-gazing extremely strange because it was done without any proof they could do what they said they can do. Very little acknowledgement that they were able to do something that required a Nobel Prize level breakthrough and they did it without any bio-science investors or board members. It also came with a heavy dose of a cult of personality which gave me the ick and made me distrust it all even more. Was so weird and performative rather than hard science. Seemed extremely scammy. Certainly not the making of a company that made huge breakthroughs in biomedicine.
Then they announced their partnership with Walgreens. I assumed at that point I was wrong and they had to have been able to show Walgreens they were able to do what they claimed. I didn't think Walgreens would partner with them without doing their due diligence. I was happy to be proven wrong.
Shortly later it turned out, no, it actually was just a straight up scam and Walgreens didn't do their due diligence. Which is the most obvious outcome, but I was sad Walgreens would be duped so easily.
So I am not dismissive of them because I am dismissive of anyone who tries to find a way to do something that has never been done before - I was dismissive of them because they were an obvious scam based on a weird cult of personality.
>I cannot say what was missing from the trial because I do not know what was presented there in detail
What a bizarre thing to say, if you don't know what information was presented at the trial, how can you concluded "The access to the information required [to determine guilt] is not available to most people, we have no basis to judge the narrative for accuracy????"