[jobu]

The first part seems probable (sell to the DoD), but intentional fraud is unlikely. Remember Hanlon's Razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

It seems more likely they were very close on the science, and decided to run with it while they worked out the last 10%. That works great for most tech companies, but healthcare technology is very different.

[dv_dt]

A simpler theory might be that once the board picked up a couple of members in certain areas, it expanded along the social network of the board.

[gozur88]

That's my read on it - the board members probably all know each other, or are friends-of-friends. Just like you and I, corporate board members recommend their friends when positions are open.

It probably doesn't hurt to have people like that on your board when you go looking for funding.

Being on a corporate board has got to be the easiest job in the world. When things are going well you collect a six or seven figure paycheck for doing almost nothing.

[danieltillett]

Tillett’s Razor - ”Never ascribe to incompetence that which can be explained by corruption”

[specialist]

Specialist's Corollary - "To observers, corruption and incompetence are indistinguishable."

[danieltillett]

Unless you get to see the offshore bank balance.

[AJ007]

Has there been any publicized and verifiable facts that they were close to having something that worked?

[danieltillett]

No. In fact all the independent data suggests that it is impossible with less than 4 drops of blood (~100µl) due to sampling issues. No matter how great the detection technology is if you are not able to get a representative sample then the end result will be garbage.

[codyb]

If 4 drops is a low bound, couldn't they have aimed for say 10? Can't you draw 10 drops of blood relatively easily from the finger? I feel like I've had that done before when donating blood. It'd still be a much less annoying process than vials after vials like it seems like most blood testing is.

It's hard for me to imagine they wouldn't have said "well, one drop didn't work but we could decently with four but we won't do that."

I haven't followed tremendously the story though.

[danieltillett]

It is really hard to get more than a single drop out of fingerprick. The reason why is the capillaries close up very quickly - if you are really lucky you can get 2 drops out, but anything more is a struggle.

The second problem with fingerprick blood is you pick up quite a bit of skin tissue in the process, but the amount collected is quite variable. What you end up measuring is blood + some unknown percentage of skin tissue derived material. None of these things are good for reproducibility.

[dnautics]

More like they had a taste of the science and decided to work out the last 90%.. But that's actually the right way to do science generally.... Just not in this case.

[mistermann]

> intentional fraud is unlikely. Remember Hanlon's Razor

Hanlon's razor isn't proof of anything.

[gradys]

No, it's more like a prior.

[unclebucknasty]

Why does Hanlon's Razor exist when it can just as easily be put the other way around?

[pizza]

P(malice) <= P(competence & intent); P(stupidity) >> P(competence & intent)

That said, Hanlon's razor can't explain away evidence.

[unclebucknasty]

   if (benefit > 0) {
      P(malice) >> P(stupidity)
   }

[newjersey]

Yup, when I make a mistake in my income tax filing and over pay by $2k that's incompetence. I wouldn't be so sure about attributing an unreported offshore shell company holding millions of dollars as incompetence.

[yxhuvud]

I agree with your first section, but not the second. A fart can look close to getting to the moon given enough layers of incompetence.

[kchoudhu]

When billions are at stake, sophisticated fraud becomes more likely though. I wouldn't dismiss the theory out of hand.

[colordrops]

Hanlon's razor is used by the malicious to fool the incompetent.