You're probably right. To me one of the weirdest parts of the story was how her (?) professor Channing Robertson at Stanford was so in awe of "her," completely sucked in a way I just don't find credible for ANY tenured professor:  “I truly was astonished,” Mr. Robertson said. She had come up with an idea for a drug-delivery system  that would be able to detect drug levels in the blood and wirelessly transmit those results. [comment: was fake and obviously so, speaking as a medicinal chemist] “It had never even occurred to me,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he considers being Ms. Holmes’s mentor akin to teaching Beethoven to play piano or teaching science to Einstein.” He also compared her to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in comments to Fortune’s Roger Parloff in 2014 (below from 2), “When I finally connected with what Elizabeth fundamentally is,” he says, “I realized that I could have just as well been looking into the eyes of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates.” Robertson was Theranos' first board member and her initial open sesame into the venture capital world as reported by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker in 2014  She persuaded Robertson to spend one day a week as a technical adviser to the company and to serve as her first board member. Eventually, he retired from his tenured position, and began working at Theranos full time.  No, there's some sick connection going on there. Not just a guy entranced by a chick, no one genuinely buys into whatever bullshit a woman is spouting when wanting to get into her pants. This, I think, is a guy entranced by a chick with a dick. A sickie and therefore very manipulatable.