The board chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google biotech spinoff Verily Life Sciences, rose to the defense of the firm Wednesday after a series of STAT reports that raised concerns about its leadership and the science behind its signature projects.
“We’re very, very confident of not only (Verily’s) approaches, but also the controls, reviews, and processes that will ultimately produce some amazing medical breakthroughs,” Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said at Alphabet’s annual shareholder’s meeting.
A STAT article Monday described skepticism by leading independent scientists and former Verily employees about three of the new company’s highest profile projects, including a proposed cancer-detecting wristband that Verily CEO Andrew Conrad has depicted as being like the Tricorder — the iconic, fictional diagnostic tool from the TV series “Star Trek.” David Walt, a Tufts University expert on biosensors, called the idea “science fantasy.”
