Still not much info and trouble brewing for Theranos
The WIRED story below reports on an article from the Wall Street Journal about Theranos having trouble living up to their claims. I was skeptical about the company when news hype circled about Theranos over a year ago.
Minimal volume with minimal information
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChadHaney/posts/Zd4UKZizmkP
There wasn’t much detail about the science behind their idea and that’s a red flag. The Wired article below even mentions peer reviewed journal articles. You’ve probably heard me and other moderator’s of the Science on Google+ community always tell ‘skeptics’ (often conspiracy theorists that call themselves skeptics), that only peer reviewed publications can be trusted when one has extraordinary claims.
I’ve written about skepticism already:
Skepticism doesn’t equal question all teh things
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChadHaney/posts/iXZqcz7bDqB
an hype with preclinical results:
Overselling preclinical results
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChadHaney/posts/UWn7Q9hTuHm
Finally, if you missed my piece on how drugs get to market, you might want to read:
Bench to Bedside
October 16, 2015
More news today: FDA recommends Theranos stop using their microfluidics tech for all but one test, and how some other microfluidics competitors are behaving differently (like publishing in peer-reviewed journals):
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/theranos-isnt-the-only-one-chasing-needle-free-blood-tests/
October 16, 2015
Thanks for the update Steve Esterly. I wrote about microfluidics on my first post about Theranos about a year ago. I hope people enjoy that bit.
October 17, 2015
they have backed up with open stats on their website. ..
https://www.theranos.com/news/posts/statement-from-theranos-2
October 17, 2015
Minal C., that’s not good enough. In the link that Steve Esterly provided, their competitors are publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Also, that doesn’t explain why a lot of their tests are being run by diluting the samples and running them on commercial equipment.