Elizabeth Homes was on trial for fraud. She intentionally lied to people to enrich herself and maintain her multi-billion dollar biotech empire. But remember, biotechnology has a substantial cargo cult science branch of science and technology. What Ms. Holmes did was not unusual. Her crime against the good name of science is the same as most biotech/pharma companies. Fake it til you make it.
Biotechnology is good. It is real. I once argued with a distant family member over the existence of DNA. His church had put on a seminar by someone who argued that DNA is a man made construct. How then did I use it to do my work? How could I order a piece of DNA and end up with a protein that I could purify and use to do specific things?
Science is about the truth. Cargo Cult Science is about BS. A bullshit artist prefers the truth when they can use it but the narrative is of utmost importance.
Elizabeth did not create a blood testing device that provided accurate results. If you had a concentration of glucose in your blood of X you could not expect Theranos technology to ever know what X is. Theranos boasted that their blood testing device could perform 273 tests. No longer would a patient have to go into a hospital and pay the exorbitant cost of their tests. Using a device the size of a toaster one could get a pin prick, have the blood sucked into the Theranos "Nanotainer", insert the "Nanotainer" into the device and within an hour have the results sent to their doctor. The only problem was that the results were not accurate. The tests did not work
Now... to Elizabeth Holmes, this did not pose a big problem. She most likely assumed that scientists could be hired to sort out those pesky details. Her mission was go raise capital to hire the scientists and provide them with what they needed. What they all needed however was the scientific method. It's not for sale in the Sigma catalog.
Any and all of the biotechnology companies that I worked for could have simply been a branch of Theranos. We all had the same problem. We began with an outcome that we would prefer. We then hired lower level "scientists" and forced them to provide evidence that the narrative is the truth.
Perhaps Elizabeth Holmes did not know how science and technology works. Perhaps she believed that one begins with a narrative based on preference. Once the narrative began to fail she was too far into a lifestyle that was wildly exciting. Sitting on stage with Bill Clinton, face on the cover of Forbes, name on list of 30 (billionaires) under 30... must of have been intoxicating. She was in a place where she wanted to be. Science/technology would be her savior. She believed in science. She had faith. She did not understand that science is not about faith.
Her story is a cautionary tale of how science can devolve into Cargo Cult Science. It costs people money, careers and freedom. As Elizabeth settles into her jail cell, many more will begin their careers in the life sciences. They too will begin pushing narratives that are not true. The world of life science, biotechnology and medical science is wrought with fraud. We do not have a sure fire way of weeding out the CCS folk from the good. It is only through the study of such cases as the Theranos fraud that we can advance our understanding of what is science and what is not.
We have a long way to go. The scientific method remains in the same quandary as it did during Richard Feynman's day.
"Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did." "So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science." -Richard Feynman.
