Bonnet Bots Untrue News Service
“Do you feel you are a fraud?” they ask. “Do you have a fear that you will be exposed any time, and colleagues will know you don’t deserve your job?” they question. And they clearly go on to say that “this only means you have imposter syndrome, and nothing is wrong with you”. I was gullible enough to believe that. That was my only bl**dy mistake. (No pun intended).
Elisabeth Holmes, ex-CEO of ex-Theranos
The above quote is what Elizabeth Holmes said while justifying to the Bonnet Bots why she did not take a step back after revelations of Theranos’ shortcomings. The bots spoke to her after a court refused the withdrawal of criminal charges against her in Oct 2020. “Its not that the fraud wasn’t known to me, its just that I thought it was imposter syndrome. Ask any HR professional worth their weight in office decorations and they will talk so much about it that you will feel they need to get their blood tested. “Pun intended?” asked the Yellow Bonnet Bot. “Of course not”, she lied, convincingly.
“Another point. They say you are copying Apple’s Steve Jobs. Is that true?” asked the Blue Bonnet Bot. “Well, the Apple watch is just starting to analyze blood oxygen and stuff, and they can’t even analyze blood sugar or BP yet. Theranos has been trying to analyze blood since 2003. Now you tell me who is the copycat?”
“So I was only following HR people’s advice. The court should first charge them before charging me for fraud” she concluded.
The yellow bot asked where she got this bizarre notion from. “There is this independent article from the independent” she claimed, and said that “Forbes.com even wrote that imposter syndrome can be a good thing.”
At the time of going to press, she was telling the Bonnet Bots how the demise of Theranos meant that the robots would never know what it feels like, to get a real fast blood test.
Image credit: Photo (just the face) of Elizabeth Holmes, by Max Morse for TechCrunch TechCrunch – TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2014 License: CC BY 2.0