Elizabeth Holmes insists she never lied. A deception expert says ‘You Can See Everything’ hinges on one tiny word
Source: Fortune ·
A University of Puget Sound professor who studies deception says Holmes may have mastered “paltering,” using true statements to create false impressions. Nathan Fielder’s hit documentary can’t settle whether she knows she’s doing it.
From the source
You Can See Everything, the A24 documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, is one of the buzziest movies in theaters right now. Audiences are leaving the 174-minute film debating its famously slippery subject: how authentic Holmes is, and how culpable she is for the fraud that landed her in federal prison. The truth about Holmes, and whether she’s intentionally duplicitous, isn’t quite black and white—or at least that’s what Nick Brody, a professor of communication studies at the University of Puget Sound, argues in a viral TikTok he posted after seeing the film. Brody teaches a course on lying and deception, where he challenges students to study how people lie, the ethics of lying, and how language shapes our understanding of the truth. Why one word—“can”—matters so much Language plays an enormous role in You Can See Everything. In a pivotal scene in the film’s first half, Fielder and Holmes debate the meaning of the word “can,” and…