SarahARolph

Loved the book. David Boies seems to have acted like a real thug. Was his behavior normal for a high-powered lawyer? Will his reputation suffer for his role here?

She was connected -- the book describes the social networks that were crucial to her scam.

I'm interested in hearing about your writing process. For example: How long was your book leave? Did you do a lot of additional reporting for the book or did you already have most of the information from your WSJ reporting? How do you organize your material, do you make an outline or use some other method? And what is your revision process like?

Yes, the use of a small blood sample was central to Holmes's vision/scam. That artificial constraint was in a sense the root of the problem. She refused to accept the real-life ramifications of that constraint, and decided to fake it instead.

The book goes into quite a bit of detail on this. They were taking all kinds of crazy shortcuts to pretend they had something they didn't. They weren't just using someone else's equipment and passing it off as their own, they had a kluge of a lab with machines being used in ways they were not supposed to be used, made-up practices that fit their false narrative of a magical new technology, and unsafe practices with respect to the calibrations, quality checks, etc. So bad results were reported, both false positives and false negatives. And people knew. This is why Carreyrou's source Erika quit, and why she reported the firm to the authorities. They should never have gone live. It is hard to believe the firm is still in business.