Not to say something nice about Rupert Murdoch, but it's no surprise that it was the Wall Street Journal that finally broke the story about the fraudulent claims Theranos was making. As you said, anyone who knew anything about blood testing knew something didn't add up. And yet other 'reputable' publications were too busy tripping over themselves to put Homes on magazine covers to do any sort of journalism about what the business was doing.
I've always wondered what the fuck the average Theranos employee did on a day to day basis. I think over 1000 people worked there, so they must have had a lot of technical people who knew that the thing was fucked. Did they just keep throwing shit at the wall and hope that one day the box would work? I'm mystified by the operations of the whole thing, Holmes's marketing notwithstanding.
I'm a book, two documentaries and a miniseries into Theranos and the clear answer is: - things were so compartmentalized that no one ever had a clear picture - anyone who might have a clear picture was fired - they ran the place like a police state - fraternization outside staged company events was heartily discouraged - you took your money and you shut the fuck up - their NDAs were toothy AF and they were extremely litigious It was a real Sand Hill Pyongyang kinda place. The Dropout is, if anything, too kind.