Is 'The Dropout' true? Episode 6 of Elizabeth Holmes Theranos drama

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Elizabeth Holmes is reaching new heights of fame and wealth all while company whistle-blowers begin exposing her complex scheme in episode 6 of Hulu's "The Dropout" miniseries.

It's the part of the story that would be almost unbelievable if it wasn't true. The efforts to keep her company afloat, her widening tangle of lies, risking patients health – Holmes has passed the point of no return and seems willing to do anything to keep her company and her image intact.

But as we see, all of Holmes and Sunny Balwani's efforts can't keep a handful of staffers from discovering the truth. This article contains spoilers for Episode 6! 

Episode 6: "Iron Sisters"

What's up with the Elizabeth Holmes closeup?

The now-famous image of Holmes surrounded in bright white and talking directly into the camera is practically inescapable. It's video footage that Alex Gibney used to kick off his documentary for HBO and is copied expertly by the makers of "The Dropout." 

The real footage was initially shot as part of an ad campaign for Theranos by legendary documentary filmmaker Erroll Morris. He used the same technique of close-up interrogations of his subjects in many of his films. The most memorable is arguably his interview the former defense secretary Robert MacNamara in 2003's "The Fog of War."

Morris, though, didn't have bad feeling about his work with Holmes and said he actually liked her a lot. He refused to participate in Gibney's film. In a 2019 interview with the New Yorker, he said this:   

Were Theranos employees really cherry-picking data?

"The Dropout" features a scene in which former Theranos Vice President Daniel Young directs Erika Cheung to remove "outlier" data from the quality control check on Theranos' blood testing equipment. 

This was a complex yet very important part of the criminal trial against Holmes. 

It's important to understand that before blood analyzers can begin testing patient samples in a CLIA certified lab, they must go through a quality control or "QC" test to make sure the analyzers are calibrated and operating properly. 

Theranos' analyzers notoriously never functioned reliably and oftentimes the quality control data would have several data points that were way out of whack. 

In order to begin actually doing work (rather than messing with the machines and turning them off and on again all day) scientists in the lab would simply scrub the wonky points and average out the rest, former lab director Dr. Adam Rosendorff testified last year. 

It's not good science and points to a fundamental flaw in the technology that Theranos would never be able to overcome. 

Did Tyler Schultz send that sharply worded email to Holmes?

Before Tyler Schultz blew the whistle on Holmes and Balwani, he gave them a chance to make things right. 

Unfortunately for them, they chose to attack him. Here's the letter Schultz sent to his superiors:

Tyler's email:

Read about the accuracy of past episodes of "The Dropout" by clicking here.

Evan Sernoffsky is an investigative reporter for KTVU who covered the four-month-long Elizabeth Holmes fraud trial from gavel-to-gavel. Email Evan at evan.sernoffsky@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @EvanSernoffsky.