[chrisBob]

It looks like the found a good gullible market with lots of money, and it will be years before anyone complains. They have an earliest delivery date of 2017 depending on how things go with the FDA.

When I see something like that my first question is if the doctors involved are real or not.

[msandford]

> When I see something like that my first question is if the doctors involved are real or not.

So the world of doctors and medicine is one that's highly regulated, has a lot of hierarchy and deference built in, and doesn't train people for things other than their job.

This leads people to not value knowing much other than their job since the the hierarchy means that they'll get abused if they offer advice, and the regulation means that nobody can really listen to it anyhow.

What you end up with is people who are fairly trusting and not terribly knowledgeable outside of their discipline. So if an engineer (or someone engineer-ey) tells a doctor that something can be done and there's no obvious reason it can't be (cell phones are powered all day off of a battery, it's not going to fly, it doesn't cure cancer, etc) then it's entirely possible they'll just say "great! when do we start" rather than try and figure it out for themselves. And I mean things today are crazy from the perspective of someone who spent 20-30 years getting educated to make what, $100k-$300k? How many 30-something website billionaires are there? It would be really easy for someone to say "if this wunderkind says it can be done good enough for me" and go along with things.

Further even if 90% of the doctors out there had the background and training and everything to spot this as a fraud, that still leaves 10% which is a large pool of people who you could dupe.

[dhandel]

I'm both a sleep apnea patient and a retired radiologist who practiced 30 years.

I assure you that even if the doctors are "real" in any given B2C commercial endeavor, there are plenty of frauds practicing medicine. I've seen them first hand. Although we are highly regulated, there is significant risk to one doc whistleblowing on another. I've seen lawsuits for slander. So, the bad apples generally are able to remain in the health care system indefinitely.

As for this particular device, it doesn't pass the sniff test IMO.

[notahacker]

Assuming regulators don't step in and call it a fraud, presumably it's the sort of product which can do just fine as the placebo effect will work its magic for at least some portion of users.

[Alkim]

The doctors looked suspiciously like models. I tried google image searching them but I think the oval surrounds threw it off. I'd bet they are fake as well.

[BuildTheRobots]

There isn't a Doctor Jeffrey Bass working at Brigham and Women's Hospital [0]. There isn't an obvious email address either, so I can't just ask them if he previously worked there or if the picture matches.

[0] http://physiciandirectory.brighamandwomens.org/?Index=10&Las...

[kohanz]

If you Google Jeff Bass and Brigham, enough hits come up to make you think that he had some sort of association with that hospital [0]. This picture here (far left) [1] looks like the same person.

http://health.usnews.com/doctors/jeffrey-bass-342891 [0]

http://www.personalmds.com/doctors/bios [1]

[BuildTheRobots]

Interesting. Your google-foo is obviously better than mine. I googled the name but the only photo I got was the one from the CPAP page :)