Theranos - The Scandal

The biomedical startup scandal of silicon valley that fooled even John Hopkins researchers, the president and the secretary of state of USA for over a decade.

Elizabeth dropped out of Stanford at 19 to build a portable blood analyzer that can run over 200 tests. What she lacked in her knowledge in biomedical engineering (she attended university for only a couple of months), she had in her leadership, public speaking and negotiation skills.

Her company became one of the most valued startups, she was featured in TED, Forbes cover and CNN as the "next Steve Jobs". Yet, she was lying outright to the investors for over 10 years by showing results she obtained from 3rd party machines as the results from her own machine that actually performs only 12 out of the promised 200 blood tests, even those giving widely erratic results. She also performed unethical tests in hundreds of cancer patients with her flawed device.

She threatened the employees with NDAs, fired anyone who spoke against her and fooled all the investors with just her charisma. Last year, the Wall Street Journal dug up her story, interviewed whistle-blowers and published an article under her threats, which finally brought down the company through multiple lawsuits.

I believe, this is the consequence of promoting the importance on leadership and public speaking skills in universities over the engineering skills and ethics. Universities should build the technical skills and the moral compass of students first and then advocate on developing the importance of soft skills. I am sure she isn't evil in her mind, her strategy has simply been 'What we do is a gift to the humanity and hence the end indeed justifies the means'.

The most dangerous villains are the ones who believe they are heroes.