
Photo: Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash
Don’t Get Theranosed: Detecting Bioscience BS
The biggest lesson I took away from the Theranos scandal was the shocking lack of due diligence from multiple quarters. It’s easy to see why the company’s celebrity Board of Directors didn’t see the scam unfolding. One wouldn’t expect non-scientists like George Schultz and Henry Kissinger to be asking technical questions at quarterly board meetings. But the representatives of Walgreens and Safeway, who entered into multi-million dollar deals with the company, should have exercised more caution. Were they, too, mesmerized by Elizabeth Holmes’s comely blonde hair, black turtleneck, and deeply resonant voice, or did an overzealous “fear of missing out” lead them astray?