How a Journalist, Not a Scientist, Exposed Theranos. What It Teaches About English

What was Theranos, and how was it exposed?

In 2015, Theranos was one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated companies. Its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, said the company had built a device that could run a wide range of medical tests from a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick. Investors poured in money, famous names joined the board, and the company was valued in the billions.

The technology did not do what the world had been told it could. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later alleged that Theranos, Holmes and former president Ramesh Balwani raised more than US$700 million from investors through false or exaggerated claims. Holmes was convicted in federal court of defrauding investors.

The person who broke the story was not a scientist. He was a journalist. A journalist is someone whose job is to find out what is true, check it, and only then report it. John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal did exactly that. The case has become a classic Theranos case study in critical thinking skills, and it holds a lesson that many people overlook.

How did a journalist expose Theranos?

Carreyrou did not need a science degree to do it. He needed one blunt question, asked again and again:

Has anyone actually shown that this works?

Everyone else had accepted the story. It was attractive, and it came with famous supporters and confident language. Carreyrou looked for the proof behind it. He spoke to people who understood the science, listened to former employees, and compared what the company said with what it could actually demonstrate. The claims did not hold up.

Carreyrou did not know more science than the scientists. He was better at checking whether the words matched the evidence.

For a look at how the story unfolded, watch this report from 60 Minutes Australia, The Fake Medical Revolution: Exposing the Theranos Lie.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the habit of judging a claim by the evidence behind it, not by how convincing it sounds. It means asking what is being claimed, what supports it, and whether the conclusion goes further than the evidence allows. Analytical thinking is closely related: breaking an argument or a piece of writing into its parts to see how it works and whether it holds together.

Is critical thinking only for maths and science?

Most people think so. Maths and science are the subjects we associate with logic, evidence and analysis. English, by comparison, is seen as the subject of feelings, opinions and nice sentences.

Theranos suggests otherwise. The skill that exposed it was not a laboratory skill. It was the skill of reading a claim closely, asking what supports it, and refusing to believe more than the evidence allows. That skill is trained every week in a good English classroom.

English is where you learn that a confident sentence and a proven one are not the same thing.

How does English teach critical thinking?

It happens differently at each level, but the habit is the same.

O-Level English and SEC G3 English: what does the text actually say?

Suppose a comprehension passage says a girl “stayed silent when her name was called.” A student writes: “She was shy.”

It sounds sensible, but the passage never says it. Silence is in the text. Shyness is the student’s guess. She might have been nervous, defiant, embarrassed, or simply not listening. Marks go to answers the words can support, not answers that merely sound reasonable.

This is Carreyrou’s question at a smaller scale. Instead of “has anyone shown that this works?”, the student asks, “which words in the passage show this?” Students who learn to ask it stop losing marks to good guesses. This is the approach behind my O-Level English tuition.

IP English and Language Arts: how does language build belief?

Holmes was presented through a powerful story: the young visionary, the university dropout who would change medicine. Add confident predictions and technical vocabulary, and the company appeared credible before anyone had checked anything.

Language Arts students learn to take that apart. How do diction, tone and narrative make a speaker sound trustworthy? Which claims are actually backed by evidence, and which are simply well told? Theranos is a real example of ethos — the appearance of credibility — doing the work that evidence should have done. My IP English and Language Arts coaching builds this kind of close reading.

A-Level General Paper: what does this example actually prove?

In a GP essay, an example has a job to do. Consider the question, “To what extent should we trust experts?” A weak paragraph says: “Experts cannot always be trusted. For example, Theranos fooled many people.” The example is mentioned, but nothing has been argued.

A stronger paragraph goes further:

The student has stated what the example proves, and just as importantly, what it does not prove. “Experts cannot be trusted” is too broad. “Claims made with expert authority should still be open to scrutiny” is precise, and defensible. That is the heart of strong GP thinking, and it is what I teach in A-Level General Paper coaching.

Why does this matter more in the age of AI?

Students now live in a world where polished, confident writing can be produced in seconds. An AI tool can give a fluent explanation with perfect grammar and an authoritative tone. None of that guarantees it is true.

The important skill is no longer just finding information. It is judging it. Can you tell evidence from assertion? Can you spot a claim that sounds convincing but proves little? Can you ask what you would need to see before believing it? These are English skills, and they are life skills.

We have written at more length on this in If AI can write an essay, why does your child still need to learn to write? and on what the latest international evidence shows in PISA 2025: is AI helping students think, or helping them avoid thinking?

What English teaching at The Raffles English Studio aims for

At The Raffles English Studio, I teach English as a way of thinking, not only as grammar, vocabulary and exam technique. For O-Level and SEC G3 students, that means reading precisely and making inferences the text supports. For IP English and Language Arts students, it means understanding how language creates belief. For JC1 and JC2 General Paper students, it means using examples as evidence and knowing what they do and do not prove.

Different levels, one habit: do not add more to the evidence than the evidence actually says.

Strong English is not about sounding intelligent. It is about thinking clearly enough to notice when something that sounds intelligent does not make sense.

Frequently asked questions