I was working on a blood test startup when Theranos imploded. We spoke with a number of their top people about working with us. The truth was that while some of the Theranos team had valuable skills/connections (e.g. getting the devices deployed into retail), the entire saga had tainted their reputations and made it so difficult to raise capital for a legit device (we did two tests while Theranos claimed to do over 200 tests) to the point we couldn’t engage with any of them.
That’s a similar response to accounting personal who worked for Arthur Anderson, the one I know personally leaves a hole in his resume during the tenure and would explain it if asked. He said it was a pretty common tactic, even for those that had no roll with Enron.
Quite possibly some sort of personality disorder, e.g. Narcissistic or Antisocial PD. Most ordinary people are unaware of just how devious and manipulative these types can be.
It's like two people in one person, a Jekyll and Hyde personality. A public face of kindness and generosity. And ruthless controlling behavior and manipulation in private, often this behavior is compulsive.
One of the more insightful comments a therapist once told me is that “many personality disorders like narcissism and borderline personality disorder are commonly misdiagnosed by the general public as ‘being an asshole’”.
That being said I’m dubious that even a diagnose of NPD or similar is a agreed upon defense against criminal charges.
Is that really a misdiagnosis on the part of the general public, or are those terms just medical classifications for what everyone acknowledges is unacceptable behavior?
Are they any less of an asshole because some doctor has carefully scrutinized and categorized the exact ways in which they’re an asshole, and why?
“Misdiagnosis” in a very broad, not technically correct sense. The issue at hand is what some random civilian should do in the situation; the way that you’d deal with someone who’s just being an asshole is quite different from what you’d do when interacting with a sociopath or narcissist.
Not every asshole reaches the level to warrant a medical diagnosis as a personality disorder. The bar for personality disorders is purposefully set quite high, and usually requires that the symptoms persist over long periods of time. Some people are just plain jerks, other people have personality disorders that predispose them to behaviors and delusions that are harmful to other people.
As far as them being “less of an asshole” because of their diagnosis, I never said or implied that. No medical diagnosis will change the impact of one’s behaviors; knowing that the person who just flamed you is medically a narcissist doesn’t reduce the impact of the flames. It’s best to assess impact completely separate from intent, in my opinion.
That being said, assessing the intention of someone with a personality disorder is really hard (much harder than it is normally with any other person), because people with disorders appear to suffer internally delusions which serve to make their behaviors feel justified, even if the excuses don’t hold a lot of water to a neutral observer. Are they intending to cause harm and justifying it after the fact, or are they disconnected with reality and reacting intensely to events that only occurred in their own heads? I don’t know.
Per usual, I’m no expert, I’ve just done a lot of motivated reading on the subject.
Wow, my comment about how devious people with NPD/APD are just got flagged. Does anyone know why this has happened? Have I broken any of the site rules here?
[Update] Double checked the site rules, not sure if mentioning that she might have a PD is against them or not.
It wouldn't surprise me that there are quite a few people out there who want information about such disorders suppressed. But I'm not really sure if that's 100% the case here.
Amateur diagnoses of psychological conditions by someone who has never interacted with the patient in a clinical setting deserves to be downvoted. The problem there is that you wrap it in terms that mean something, but you don't have the education or access to use those words correctly.
It's irresponsible and amounts to un-informed gossip that questions who someone is at their core.
> [Mindy] Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving “interpersonal violence,” according to her faculty profile on the school’s website.
They must be running low on good defensive options. As a non-expert, it kind of looks like the only mental disease she could possibly claim would be some variant of sociopathy, and I don’t think sociopaths get to use their disease as an excuse during criminal trials.
And to be clear, I don’t blame her lawyers for doing this. It’s their job to zealously defend her, as distasteful as I find her behavior to have been, and the defense is what the defense must be.
But yeah, they must not have much else available if they’re going for the insanity plea.
if she had never been caught Theranos would probably be a public company by now trading at a $50B valuation off of covid testing hopes given the frothiness of this market and the money being thrown at diagnostics.
Yes, it’s been tried before. Ethan Couch[0] used it to get a low sentence after driving drunk, killing four people and injuring nine quite greviously. The basic argument was that he wasn’t given any feedback as a child, and needed rehabilitation, and managed to get him put into rehab and 10 years probation.
Given that he was re arrested two years later for drinking and violating probation, it doesn’t seem like the rehab worked.
> Davila also ruled, over Holmes’s objections, that the examination of the former CEO will be videotaped. Holmes’s lawyers argued the recording would “negatively affect the tenor or the interview,” according to the ruling.
Or accurately reflect the false "tenor" she speaks with. Sorry, I had to say it.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 67.2 ms ] threadThey likely would’ve released a fake test and gotten a lot of people killed.
Hope she gets her appropriate punishment.
I almost applied for a job there and was willing to move my family to the Bay Area to work on something that meaningful. So glad I dodged the bullet.
I bet working at Facebook will have similar questions to be answered.
It's like two people in one person, a Jekyll and Hyde personality. A public face of kindness and generosity. And ruthless controlling behavior and manipulation in private, often this behavior is compulsive.
That being said I’m dubious that even a diagnose of NPD or similar is a agreed upon defense against criminal charges.
Are they any less of an asshole because some doctor has carefully scrutinized and categorized the exact ways in which they’re an asshole, and why?
Not every asshole reaches the level to warrant a medical diagnosis as a personality disorder. The bar for personality disorders is purposefully set quite high, and usually requires that the symptoms persist over long periods of time. Some people are just plain jerks, other people have personality disorders that predispose them to behaviors and delusions that are harmful to other people.
As far as them being “less of an asshole” because of their diagnosis, I never said or implied that. No medical diagnosis will change the impact of one’s behaviors; knowing that the person who just flamed you is medically a narcissist doesn’t reduce the impact of the flames. It’s best to assess impact completely separate from intent, in my opinion.
That being said, assessing the intention of someone with a personality disorder is really hard (much harder than it is normally with any other person), because people with disorders appear to suffer internally delusions which serve to make their behaviors feel justified, even if the excuses don’t hold a lot of water to a neutral observer. Are they intending to cause harm and justifying it after the fact, or are they disconnected with reality and reacting intensely to events that only occurred in their own heads? I don’t know.
Per usual, I’m no expert, I’ve just done a lot of motivated reading on the subject.
[Update] Double checked the site rules, not sure if mentioning that she might have a PD is against them or not.
It wouldn't surprise me that there are quite a few people out there who want information about such disorders suppressed. But I'm not really sure if that's 100% the case here.
It's irresponsible and amounts to un-informed gossip that questions who someone is at their core.
> [Mindy] Mechanic is an expert on the psychosocial consequences of trauma, with a focus on violence against women, and often provides expert testimony in cases involving “interpersonal violence,” according to her faculty profile on the school’s website.
If they had a clear, viable strategy they wouldn't be playing the twinkie defense or trying anything that might work.
But yeah, they must not have much else available if they’re going for the insanity plea.
Given that he was re arrested two years later for drinking and violating probation, it doesn’t seem like the rehab worked.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch
Or accurately reflect the false "tenor" she speaks with. Sorry, I had to say it.