Cherry-picking data was routine practice at Theranos, former lab worker says

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of blood-testing and life sciences company Theranos, leaves the courthouse with her husband Billy Evans after the first day of her fraud trial in San Jose, California, on September 8, 2021. (credit: Nick Otto / AFP)

At Theranos, lab techs would regularly omit two outlier" data points from analysis in order to get the company's machines to pass quality checks, whistleblower Erika Cheung told jurors yesterday at the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

The process of removing outliers from an analysis isn't necessarily unusual. But Theranos' own lab manual did not say how outliers should be identified, so to get the company's proprietary blood-testing devices to pass quality checks, employees could decide which results to keep, essentially cherry-picking" data, Cheung said.

It was very concerning in a research context because once that translates to a patient setting, it's giving you a good indication that the system isn't working reliably enough to feel confident and comfortable in running patient samples," she said.

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