Elizabeth Holmes: Theranos founder convicted of fraud DEEP VOICE

[bubblesbubbles11]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59734254

Am I being unreasonable to think that anyone who listened to Elizabeth Holmes's very deep voice when she did public speaking (or even whilst in her business operations) should surely have thought something was not right, well before any scandal?

It is so bizarre to listen to.

I've listened to the Dropout all the way through. She is majorly irritating and whilst some of her investors really didn't deserve to lose so much, the likes of Betsy DeVos... well... good!

She modelled herself on Steve Jobs even down to black polo necks. She never answered questions properly and listening to the many times investors would ask stuff, it was all just nonsense flannel. I'm surprised so many were taken in by her.

I saw a documentary on this and the business seemed great and I think people were so keen for it to work that they overlooked the fact it didn't work.
I don't think she started it off to defraud people. I think she thought eventually she'd get there but sadly didn't

@Ozanj

She got convicted because US courts don’t really consider domestic abuse / violence properly in trials against women. I would expect her to appeal as it seems it was her abusive ex-partner who was the one responsible for the finances. So any requests for wire fraud would have to have been instigated by him & there probably is a paper trail as he will soon be trialled too.

Like many people, I find this argument spurious. I am all for recognising the impacts of DV, but she started the company well before Balwani came along and testimony from those who worked with both indicate that for all Balwani's bluster, she was CEO and unquestionably had the upper hand.

It's pretty clear he fed her worst tendencies, but I don't find the idea that she was a sweet ingenue led astray by an abuser very convincing. She had set her goal and her path well before he came along.

Oh and... there's a film coming up. Jennifer Lawrence is playing Elizabeth Holmes.

"her idea was great in the beginning but instead of conceding that healthcare has different requirements to say, a smart thermostat, she and her company kept bluffing and boasting and never delivered the ground breaking product she was claiming"

so is this the Sir Clive Sinclair equivalent in healthcare and in the next x decades someone is going to come along and deliver what she failed to? or do you think your above statement means the concept itself will never happen?

i have no expertise in the sector so have no idea.

I agree with Zoethe i feel people make excuses for her because she is a woman. Why can't woman be capable of it

some of the tests are possible with a pin prick of blood. but that was not enough for her/her company.

I'm sure there are developers working on it for those that might work well. just not the full range. and not in a medevac helicopter.

Bad blood is indeed and excellent book.

I agree OP the voice is so obviously (and now admittedly) faked that you would imagine anyone listening would find it indicative of deeper lies and misrepresentation.

There are all kinds of huge technical problems with doing many blood tests on tiny pinprick volumes of blood which other scientists have been working on for years. Holmes claimed to have solved those problems, which did make many knowledgeable people sceptical, but she defended her "trade secrets" extremely vigorously. "Bad Blood" has a good idiot's discussion of the issues.

Am I alone in not thinking her voice sounds that bad? ¯\(ツ)/¯

I agree the case is absolutely fascinating!

From the evidence the DV line seemed a bit desperate. The Defence did not put up an expert witness to testify to the impact of DV on EH actions (one was listed on the possible witness list) which speaks volumes as to how they viewed the value/strength of their potential evidence

It's amazing how many eminent old codgers she duped, read the book, and looking forward to the film, what a horrible piece of work and that sonny guy, they treated people appallingly

I love this pulling back the curtain of corrupt rich society

this is worth a look but its very long

There is also a documentary which I really enjoyed (watched it on an Emirates plane journey)

www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-inventor-out-for-blood-in-silicon-valley

Not sure where else it is available for viewing unfortunately

@Butchyrestingface

Am I alone in not thinking her voice sounds that bad? ¯\\(ツ)/¯

This is the first I’ve read about it, and it does appear fascinating. I think the voice sounds deliberately slow and quite obviously faked?

Seconded re; Bad Blood podcast. Also recommend The Dropout podcast too.

My son phoned me on day 1 of the trial shrieking "she's doing the voice! She's doing the voice"

I'm obsessed with this case, it's so interesting. I'd also recommend the book and the podcast Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, they are both excellent.

The voice is interesting as it's part of a whole package of deception she undertook. She's fascinating.

There’s a tiny clip of her voice here m.youtube.com/watch?v=PjnsYz-xdOI

I don't think her voice sounded that weird or deep lowered either. And the claim in that video that it's the sign of a sociopath is ridiculous; if so, every actor, performer, singer, and even people who do different voices when they read their kids a story is a sociopath. It was a perfectly rational thing for her to do as a startup female CEO fighting for credibility, funding, and media attention in tech. The problem isn't that she deliberately lowered her voice, the problem is that she told a pack of deliberate lies about what her tech can do. Her desperation to adopt the trappings of a Steve Jobs persona is rather harmless and sad by comparison.

It’s a fact that women are advised to make their voices a lower register in order to be listened to - Margaret Thatcher famously had elocution lessons before she ran for leadership for this purpose.
As an indication of psychopathy, presumably, this theory only exists in the minds of threatened men, perhaps? When a lower voice gives the woman an equal footing, in terms of gravitas?

I have listened to the "dropout" podcast which has covered the Theranos scandal and court case in depth.

Elizabeth's voice is indeed "put on". People who knew her at college and before starting her company said she did not speak like that. She has trained herself to speak with the deep voice in order to be taken more seriously and to sound more authoritative.

It's part of the smoke and mirrors around the company and the fraud. But it's a bit of a reach to say everyone with a deep voice is a fraudster, or the deep voice was integral to the fraud. It's a lot more complex than that.

@VanCleefArpels

I’d thoroughly recommend The Dropout podcast which explains it all. There a second season covering the trial which includes some great contributions from a tech investor that was offered a piece of Theranos but swerved - he talks about investor FOMO - people trying to get on the latest hot thing without doing proper due diligence. The investors that testified at trial came across as naive and certainly did not dig in beyond what EH was telling them before they threw literally hundreds of millions of dollars at her

I agree with the FOMO.

But the podcast does go into the fact she was sending out material branded with names like Pfizer, Glaxo SmithKline or Bayer, all saying how amazing her technology was - which was part of the fraud.

And the fact she got one prominent former politician on board and used their name to hook in more.

But it was all lies - her technology sounded brilliant, a whole range of blood tests from one fingerprick of blood rather than a whole test tube of blood. But they just couldn't run the tests they said they could, and were reporting inaccurate results for things like HIV.