Thread: Elizabeth Holmes And Theranos: Female Psychopath Or Pakistani Immigrant Grooming? (Or Both?)

"Is there more to the Theranos debacle than we are being told? Indeed, could there even be a immigration dimension to what has happened to Elizabeth Holmes and her once-hailed company?
. . . Holmes dropped out of Stanford aged 19, in 2003, to set up her company, “Theranos.” She claimed to have developed equipment which could diagnose multiple serious illnesses using only miniscule drops of blood. This miracle piece of technology would mean that patients could constantly be aware of their own health status. They could test themselves, quickly conveying the results to their medics. Endorsed by Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and many others, “The Next Steve Jobs,” who even dressed in black like her supposed idol, was running a company worth $9 billion by 2015 [Elizabeth Holmes on trial, by Samuel Fishwick, Evening Standard, September 2, 2021].


But it was all a sham, as she surely knew. Silicon Valley companies regularly exaggerate in order to drum up investment capital, but Holmes’ claims—constantly repeated credulously in the media—were simply untrue. Her machine took 99.9% less blood than standard devices, didn’t work and in fact gave many dangerous false results. People who showed up for tests with the device were actually tested using old-fashioned needles instead. If they weren’t, they were, for example, falsely told that they were having a miscarriage [Elizabeth Holmes’ trial: Theranos patient testifies about miscarriage diagnosis, BBC News, September 23, 2021].
. . . By 2015, when serious issues were being raised about her product, Holmes proclaimed: “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world” [Theranos founder was 'personally shocked' about the story slamming her company today, by Kevin Loria and Lauren F. Friedman, Businessinsider.com, October 15, 2015]. But by 2018, numerous fraudulent practices had seemingly been uncovered and Theranos came crashing down.


. . . On the face of it, it could be argued that Holmes epitomizes the female psychopath. These are different from male psychopaths and far less is known about them, because they are far rarer. About 30% of incarcerated men are psychopaths, compared to only 17% of incarcerated women. Thus, whereas a male psychopath is openly narcissistic and brags of his brilliance, a female psychopath will be more covert. She will, for example, surround herself with high-status people, persuading those people to endorse her. Where, really, she should have the endorsement of nerdy scientists, she will get former presidents or secretaries of state. Male psychopaths will be openly aggressive towards you. Female psychopaths will manipulate you and gaslight you [How to Identify a Female Psychopath, by Melissa Burkley, Psychology Today, November 12, 2018].


. . . The prosecution argues that Holmes is a manipulative liar. And, let’s face it, there is something satisfying about seeing self-congratulating proto-Woke types, who backed Holmes because she was young and female, losing money that they might have better invested in a company run by an experienced, qualified middle-aged white man . . . "
Full article: https://vdare.com/articles/elizabeth...ooming-or-both

Male or Female I have noticed all of these super achievers got where they are by cutting corners and being corrupt. So I am not surprised at all.

Originally Posted by CPRA

. . . On the face of it, it could be argued that Holmes epitomizes the female psychopath. These are different from male psychopaths and far less is known about them, because they are far rarer.

LOL. How would we know a thing like that? All we know is that they get caught less often.

We all know about men who shoot their wives; but no-one is able to count the wives who poison their husbands.

Originally Posted by Mr Wombat

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LOL. How would we know a thing like that? All we know is that they get caught less often.

We all know about men who shoot their wives; but no-one is able to count the wives who poison their husbands.

Statistics are only as accurate as the source. Where are the stats on pussy pass forgiveness? One place I can think of is your driving record where we may more to insure when in fact we're better overall drivers that rack up millions of more miles per average.

Equality means accountability and we'll have none of that!

Elizabeth Holmes is a liar and a crook who deserves to rot in prison. If she were a pot-bellied, balding dude with a hunch and a funny looking big nose, she would be locked away for decades. They'll go easy on her, however, because she's a pretty white lady. But she's a CROOK! She totally lied about what her blood tests could do, and then they hid the truth by using conventional blood tests. She basically came up with an idea of these blood test cartridges and then just dreamed up claims about how well they could work with. She had no actual science or blueprints behind making that shit happen. It was blatant fraud. It was just as fraudulent as claiming you've got a perpetual motion machine, except her slick marketing hid what a scam it was for a long time and bilked people for billions.

She's nothing but a sleazy crook. I hope no one on the jury judges her based on how good her pussy would feel around his dick, but dumb-asses on juries do that all the time.

Originally Posted by TigPlaze

She basically came up with an idea of these blood test cartridges and then just dreamed up claims about how well they could work with. She had no actual science or blueprints behind making that shit happen. It was blatant fraud.

It's weirder than that. It's a whole stratum of society - the wealthy and powerful, bankers, CEOs, billionaires - who have almost no idea at all how stuff works.

It's this that makes a nonsense of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". The billionaires in Galt's Gulch would not have been able to form a functioning society. There's not one of them who could have changed a tap washer, or even know what one was.

Originally Posted by Mr Wombat

It's this that makes a nonsense of Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". The billionaires in Galt's Gulch would not have been able to form a functioning society. There's not one of them who could have changed a tap washer, or even know what one was.

I disagree. Holmes, and her ilk, come up with something they think is 'cool' and somewhat plausible, and then make the form more important than the functions (cf: 'Hyperloop', 'Waterseer', 'Solar Roadways' etc etc ad nauseam). The focus on design means they can deflect from the failure of the underlying technology. Gates never wrote MS-DOS, Zuckerburg and Dorsey just figured a way to pander to the feminine imperative for gossip, Musk never founded PayPal or Tesla.

John Galt was a scientist who invented a new type of motor - which he then built working examples of to power 'Galts Gulch'. Hank Reardon was a metallurgist who developed a new type of metal - stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum - for use on the railroads. Ken Danagger was a former miner who figured better ways to extract coal and bought his own mines. These were men who had worked their way up (occasionally from a position that had privilege that could be drawn upon - such as Francisco D'Anconia) and proved their worth by creating values.

What I understand of Elizabeth Holmes she took the 'fake it until you make it' approach and used Thomas Edison as her frame of reference. I cannot remember Edison's story off the top of my head and wont research before I type, but she looked at the way Edison would not accept defeat for his idea to create the light bulb even though the success rate was zero until he cracked it.
Holmes acted fraudulenty because she gave investors the impression that she had a working machine but in reality she had nothing. But what she beleived was that with enough investment she could 'crack' the technology and provide the 'lightbulb' like Edison finally did.

But unlike Edison her idea was overly complex so an application of the same principle was fundamentally problematic. To me she was utterly deluded which maybe in turn manifest as what we might call her Psychopathic tendencies. But she is certainly a supreme narcissist. When you look at how Narcissism correlate with other traits in The Dark triad - those being Anti Social PD and Machiavellianism it is easier to think of her as a Psychopath. But i think that over simplifies her clinical profile.

We cannot look at the individual without looking at the context within which she functioned. She received validation from others - albeit misplaced - but which, for a women with a delusion would have been taken as evidence that she was correct to continue the ;fake it until you make it' principle for eventually the deceit would be forgiven once she came up with the working 'lightbulb'.

Just my thoughts anyway.

Holmes really gives me the creeps - never blinking, the Steve Jobs turtlenecks and weirdest of all, putting on a deep voice for every interview. She is definitely some kind of psychopath.

The thing which really perplexed me is that before the trial she started dating some young heir to a hotel chain and I believe they even had a kid (no doubt to mitigate the sentence). She is not, in my opinion, particularly attractive in any case but you would think all the lies, deception and bizarre behaviour would be somewhat of a red flag. I suppose some men are just incurably dumb.

I suspect she will get off quite lightly - because of the kid, being a woman and shifting the blame onto her business partner. No way she gets the 20 year top sentence.