Corporate Misconduct: Erika Cheung on Her Experience Reporting Problems at Theranos — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:04and I think when I was at theranos it
2. 0:07was basically looking at the way in
3. 0:09which we were sitting in our r d
4. 0:11meetings and trying to vet okay what is
5. 0:15the accuracy of this test and how does
6. 0:18it compare to all of these other
7. 0:21internal studies that we're doing and
8. 0:23when we were generating the results for
9. 0:26the accuracy essentially it would be six
10. 0:28different numbers that you would have to
11. 0:30pull together and what I was noticing is
12. 0:33that they were going in and saying oh
13. 0:36the accuracy didn't hit five let's take
14. 0:39these six numbers start deleting
15. 0:41outliers in order to get closer to five
16. 0:45because we're at 12. and so this was
17. 0:47like well what is this this is strange
18. 0:50like what is this outlier deletion
19. 0:52process because it just doesn't seem to
20. 0:53make sense to me what the logic and the
21. 0:56rationale between what you decide to
22. 0:58delete and what you don't delete and if
23. 1:01anyone has any sort of scientific
24. 1:03training the number one thing they teach
25. 1:05you is you just keep all the data and
26. 1:09once you have all the data you can kind
27. 1:11of discern what kind of patterns are we
28. 1:13seeing what's actually going on here and
29. 1:16so this act of this outlier deletion was
30. 1:19that curious of like am I missing
31. 1:21something here what what's kind of going
32. 1:22on what is this process and I remember
33. 1:24going to so many different people like
34. 1:26can someone just give me an sop about
35. 1:28how you do outlier deletion because it
36. 1:30just seems like they're making this up
37. 1:32and people are like oh well if it's high
38. 1:35here and it's low here and you compare
39. 1:37it and no one could could ever give me a
40. 1:38good answer on what that actual
41. 1:42framework they were using for this out
42. 1:44tired outlier deletion was and what I
43. 1:47started to notice is because they were
44. 1:49engaging in this practice when I would
45. 1:52then go on to test patient samples
46. 1:55essentially prior to running a patient
47. 1:57sample you run these things called
48. 1:58quality controls so it's a sample you
49. 2:01run where again you know the
50. 2:03concentration is supposed to equal 12.
51. 2:04and whenever I'd run it through the
52. 2:07device it'd come out like 54 or
53. 2:09something
54. 2:10so then I was like oh okay
55. 2:12it's now at the point that our whole
56. 2:14machine has been been developed on data
57. 2:17that's been manipulated so now when
58. 2:20we're actually running the patient
59. 2:21samples on these machines is generating
60. 2:24the false result and it's not coming out
61. 2:27the right way so then again I was
62. 2:29curious like okay uh where's the problem
63. 2:32then because now I have this machine
64. 2:34that's supposed to tell me that this
65. 2:36equals 12 and it equals 42. so where did
66. 2:39we go wrong where are the problems and
67. 2:42so I had spent a lot of time trying to
68. 2:44investigate internally in the
69. 2:46organization where where is this problem
70. 2:48is it the chemistry is it the device is
71. 2:51it I'm incompetent like why could it be
72. 2:54what could it be because at the end of
73. 2:56the day the one thing I know is that 12
74. 2:58does not equal 42 and there's no way
75. 3:02there's no way that that anyone's going
76. 3:04to convince me of that so so that was a
77. 3:06point of just running these different
78. 3:08experiments of this one simple this one
79. 3:11simple idea of like I know 12 equals 12.
80. 3:13why is it not equaling 12 in this case
81. 3:16how can we sort of figure out what's
82. 3:19kind of going on there and I think my
83. 3:21curiosity was I was talking to Taya
84. 3:24about this was quite innocent you know I
85. 3:25I thought that everyone in the
86. 3:27organization was just like me just
87. 3:29trying to make this machine work was
88. 3:31trying to make the company viable was
89. 3:33trying to ensure that we could test
90. 3:34patients and it produce high quality
91. 3:37results but
92. 3:40that started to shift the more and more
93. 3:43I'd bring up these instances up to
94. 3:45people and I'd watch people try and
95. 3:49basically sabotage the fact that I was
96. 3:51creating error report sheets and we were
97. 3:54seeing so many errors and they would
98. 3:55like take them down from the machines to
99. 3:58sort of hide the fact that these issues
100. 4:00were happening as frequently as they
101. 4:01were was getting pushback when I talked
102. 4:04to uh different leaders of saying you
103. 4:10know oh it's a statistical error that
104. 4:13something in our programming that's why
105. 4:15it's generating this you're not you're
106. 4:17not running essentially these different
107. 4:19analyzes the correct way that's why
108. 4:21you're getting the false result and so
109. 4:24from there of just this accumulation of
110. 4:26data the fact that I was starting to get
111. 4:28push back the fact that I kept raising
112. 4:30the alarm Higher and Higher and instead
113. 4:32of people saying like oh this is a
114. 4:35problem let's see what we can do about
115. 4:36this or oh this has severe consequences
116. 4:39this means that there are issues in
117. 4:41terms of how we generate patient samples
118. 4:43maybe we should pull these tests
119. 4:47um kind of that that that transition
120. 4:51started to happen when it was like you
121. 4:53couldn't fight the evidence anymore that
122. 4:56if things weren't working and no one was
123. 4:58doing anything about it I was really
124. 5:00committed to wanting to work on a
125. 5:02problem like that and so for me even
126. 5:05though I was headed up against
127. 5:07opposition of different people
128. 5:09internally organization that
129. 5:12responsibility to even that Vision was
130. 5:15still so strong of wanting to provide
131. 5:18good health care for people of seeing
132. 5:20that as a genuine need of something that
133. 5:23people we needed to work on in society
134. 5:26and so in terms of going forward and
135. 5:30hitting that opposition and recognizing
136. 5:32or dealing with all these different
137. 5:33personalities you know different
138. 5:35emotions different identities people
139. 5:36have different agendas and priorities to
140. 5:39me it was just that grounding in I'm
141. 5:43responsible to my patients if this was
142. 5:46my sister if this was my family member
143. 5:48if this was a friend anyone I would
144. 5:53lose it right I'd be so angry that
145. 5:55someone would Express that level of
146. 5:59negligence over something as precious as
147. 6:01their health status and the implications
148. 6:03that could have on the drugs that they
149. 6:05take on the diagnosis that they have on
150. 6:07even just the anxiety of did I get a
151. 6:09misdiagnosis and now I think you know
152. 6:12I'm not going to be able to have
153. 6:13children when I actually am which did
154. 6:16happen several times with all these
155. 6:17testosterone tests that they were giving
156. 6:19to young women actually in our
157. 6:21organization where all of them thought
158. 6:22that they had some sort of
159. 6:24um
160. 6:25hormonal disorder
161. 6:27so that made it
162. 6:31in a way it's hard to explain it's like
163. 6:33that made it easy even when the
164. 6:35adversity of speaking forward or the
165. 6:38adversity of all the pressures around me
166. 6:40became so difficult to manage
167. 6:43that that whatever that is that sense of
168. 6:47responsibility that knowingness of
169. 6:49someone else's experience and just
170. 6:52putting myself in the shoes of those
171. 6:54individuals made it easy to actually
172. 6:59say something like the act of saying
173. 7:01something is not hard it is not hard at
174. 7:04all it is it is the pressure sort of
175. 7:08surrounding that the personality sort of
176. 7:09surrounding that that kind of made it
177. 7:11difficult but like at the end of the day
178. 7:13this wasn't personal this was very we
179. 7:16have a job to do
180. 7:18uh we're supposed to provide high
181. 7:20quality Diagnostics like I think I have
182. 7:23a fair standard as anyone would have a
183. 7:25fair standard on what quality means in
184. 7:27that context
185. 7:29and we're not hitting that and what are
186. 7:31we going to do about it and that was
187. 7:33probably
188. 7:36the simple message that I kind of
189. 7:39carried even though the pressures were
190. 7:41quite High