[icegreentea]

I think you're being a bit too harsh.. or at least your getting distracted by all the wrong stuff.

None of this interaction really screams shady to me, just defensive actions by a company facing shitty PR. Some crap went down, and they're pulling back all their feelers and trying to maintain some degree of control.

The REAL shady parts of Theranos is all their other shit with their dealings with the FDA, the questionable effectiveness of their testing, their insane board of directors, and the what not.

All this piece shows is the Theranos is panicking (and panicking has nothing to do with how above board you are).

[SilasX]

I agree that those other things are stronger evidence, but I think the stuff I cited is still a significant, independent strike against Theranos.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but in a negative PR storm, isn't it a godsend when people (especially journalists) are actually trying out your product for themselves rather than joining the bandwagon based on innuendo? Why would they be turning away people from trying the one technology they (still) hype the heck out of on their website?

And why would the communications director be getting names of patients (point 4)? Passing private medical information over to a PR agent is really shady and an abuse of trust.

[Pyxl101]

I agree with the GP on this one that most of those points are not shady. Point #1 is bogus: if you're already doing a venous draw then why do another separate test as well? That's just good sense.

The other points don't especially surprise me either. They seem mostly like either just a cautious response to learning she's a reporter or even standard practice. Many above-board companies who are cautious about their press presence train their employees not to talk to reporters, or to be careful around them, and to report them to the company's PR team.

Reporters don't get everything right, and some have an axe to grind and will twist details to suit their narrative. It's normal for companies to attempt to control their interaction with them.

This strikes me as a cautious response and doesn't even seem especially paranoid to me, or only a little. They have taken really bad press recently and it's not unusual for their employees to have been told by this point to be careful around reporters and to notify headquarters.

Unfortunately the piece does not include a detail that it would have been really useful to know, which is what happens if you walk in and order the one test that can be conducted with a finger prick - would they use their test or not? The difficulty ordering the test that occurred when she asked could have been affected by the fact that she had told him she was a reporter, and the employees freaked out a bit. Those were low level employees who had presumably not been trained on how to interact with the press, but knew about their company's bad situation. I would not recommend reading too much into it.

Plus the reporter almost certainly got Theranos' hackles up by communicating with them and receiving an invitation to have a test done, and then going behind their back to do it anonymously at another center. I won't say that it's unethical for him to have done that, but it's definitely an aggressive action or will seem so to Theranos.

[SilasX]

>Point #1 is bogus: if you're already doing a venous draw then why do another separate test as well? That's just good sense.

Note what followed in point 2 (and what I should have added on 1 but for being too repetitive): when you do ask for just that test, suddenly it's not available!

>Unfortunately the piece does not include a detail that it would have been really useful to know, which is what happens if you walk in and order the one test that can be conducted with a finger prick - would they use their test or not? The difficulty ordering the test that occurred when she asked could have been affected by the fact that she had told him she was a reporter,

I think it's just as important to reveal that bit: that whether they use the top-secret tech might depend on whether you're a skeptic or otherwise not a sympathetic party.

>Plus the reporter almost certainly got Theranos' hackles up by communicating with them and receiving an invitation to have a test done, and then going behind their back to do it anonymously at another center. I won't say that it's unethical for him to have done that, but it's definitely an aggressive action or will seem so to Theranos.

In my book, "a company that is upset that you tested a sample offered to the general public rather than one they cherry-picked for you" is a shady company.

[Pyxl101]

In asking for that specific test, she disclosed that she was a reporter conducting a surprise investigation into the company. That would reasonably freak out a company in Theranos' position, especially low level employees who might have heard they should be careful about reporters but don't know exactly what to do. It's hard to draw conclusions from the story. We'd have learned more if she had asked for that one test alone for which they use finger prick.