But really, I think it would be a huge mistake to put all the blame on her. She was very young and inexperienced when she started all this. How could so many people, from employees, board staff, and investors get into this?
She viciously persecuted naysayers and sceptics. She very well knew that the whole thing was a scam.
Maybe not all the blame, but something like 95%-99%. As for being young and inexperienced - what has that have to do with anything?
It's interesting how so many people seem not to want to make any people that got fooled by this get any responsibility. From your reply, I think you didn't get my point.
Seriously. You just don't trust someone that inexperienced in the domain claiming to achieve something that is clearly not realistic right from the start. Especially in the medical device field. I know how american people like this "self-made" entrepreneurs and how those university dropouts creating very successful businesses is part of the dream, but you gotta keep some common sense. You just don't trust someone with zero experience and actually knowing almost nothing useful for the project at hand, claiming to achieve what nobody else has.
Anyone who trusted her is just that, a fool. And people who have actively participated in this, in particular engineers and biologists, are to blame as well. It's absolutely impossible that they didn't know what they were doing. Anyone with half a scientific/engineering background would have been able to tell this was just never going to work. Anyone actively participating in this or funding this (without doing proper verification about the ideas, their implementation as the project goes along and the results once it's starting to be used on patients) has been an accomplice, whether they like it or not.
I know she has weird eyes, but it's almost like people think she has hypnotized the whole team or something. Scamming customers/end-users is not the same thing at all. The latter are not supposed to know anything about the scientific or technical aspects of what they are sold. Engineers and funders... are. She persecuted people? Yeah. If there were proofs of that, sueing her for this may have shortened the whole affair.
As I said, it's the same shit with many, if not most "startups". Here people are shocked because Theranos "played" with people's health, but otherwise the mechanism is always the same. Of course there are scammers out there, "serial entrepreneurs", coming up with one BS idea per month. What's concerning IMHO is that so many people can fall for that. And this very section of the forum keeps showing us that. Those scammers could not do anything without people actively participating in their BS, and those people are supposed to be responsible and educated adults. Just my 2 cents.
Of course not saying she shouldn't be sentenced. She should. But I think at least a few other key people should as well.