Elizabeth Holmes - the epic fall of a false prophet

Elizabeth Holmes is a young entrepreneur that dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19 to launch Theranos.??A company supposedly destined to revolutionise blood testing and valued around 9 billion dollars at its peak. Rapid and accurate testing of over 240 blood markers from a single drop of blood. Seems almost too good to be true??

When you look deeper into the tech it makes you wonder how Elizabeth Holmes could deceive investors and the likes of Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoc and George Shultz. The key elements behind Theranos was the nanotainer, which was used to collect blood from a finger prick, and the Edison, which was operated by a robotic hand employed to dispense blood in different containers for immuno-assaying. This is were my alarm clocks started ringing. If you have worked with immuno-assaying you know all about the challenges associated with unspecific antigen binding and the irreversibility of this technology – meaning that is super complicated to run the same test on the same sensor twice and distinguishing single markers from a pool of 240 test parameters.??In stark contrast to their claimed super feasible and cost-effective test for the broader populace.?

It is also theoretically impossible to detect so many markers from only one drop of blood with standard technology, and Theranos did not invent anything new, but basically copy-pasted standardised techs into a smart box. Obviously, this was doomed to fail from the beginning. Many experts in the field including one of Holmes’s?teachers from Stanford shouted this out at an early stage, but nobody listened.?Why??

In my opinion the answer to this question is more intriguing than dragging Holmes through the mud and imprisoning her in a pillory for public abuse. So let us look into the why instead? Namely, how a 19-year college dropout could deceive the whole world?

People like to believe. Indeed, there is something strange about it. We have this masochistic tendency to become captivated and lured into make believe promised lands by false prophets. And we do like fantastic tales of champions and great heroes doing amazing deeds for humanity.??Don’t we???Just look at the legendary stories about Gilgamesh, Rostam, Jason and Odysseus and our attraction towards athletes, explorers and daredevils.

Elizabeth Holmes was none of those, but she was an attractive, charming and articulate individual claiming to make our world a better place with Theranos. But not only that – she was indeed much more. Namely, a young female entrepreneur. All together a rarity?in a field dominated by unattractiveness and smelly armpits. It is easy to be blown away by a unicorn like that. Especially, by investors and politicians who have no clue about science. Holmes’s Edison box would never pass a peer-review process?

Unfortunately, this is not the first instance of a great deception like this. We have been fooled a lot throughout our history. By false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing’s, high priests, bishops, kings and dictators.??We are therefore very cautious whenever we encounter imposters with those particular traits.

But does this mean, that we now have to cry out loudly, wolf! wolf! whenever a blonde woman with a deep voice wants to change the world?Or whenever a scientist tries to sell technology that is super advanced and far-fetched? Does this mean that investors and governments around the world shall reduce deep-tech investments and funding for science? Certainly not!

What we need to learn is how to greet everybody with an open and flexible mind without prejudice, while simultaneously keeping our bullshit detector ready. Imposters and bogeymen come in different shapes and forms. We need to look beyond morphing shapes and empty shells, and instead into the heart of things. Because next time the imposter might look different and come in another disguise.