I used to think the biggest threat to science was politics, misinformation, or lack of funding.
I was wrong.
The biggest threat is compliance—not the good kind that ensures safety, but the metastasized kind that pretends to protect while preventing progress.
We Don’t Regulate for Outcomes—We Regulate for Ritual
The modern compliance machine doesn’t ask:
Does this work?
Does this improve outcomes?
Is this backed by causal data?
Instead, it asks:
Does this meet this year’s version of the spec?
Was this logged in triplicate?
Did the approved vendor sign off with the right acronym?
This isn’t science. This is ceremony.
Where Science Ends, Bureaucracy Begins
The scientific method is simple:
Form a hypothesis
Run experiments
Measure outcomes
Repeat what works
Stop doing what doesn’t
Compliance flips this on its head:
Keep doing what’s been approved
Add layers when it fails
Protect liability at all costs
Never admit the protocol is the problem
And somehow, the word science still gets stamped on it.
AI Is Now a Compliance Tool
You’d think AI could help. It can.
But only if you’re allowed to use it.
In practice, most “AI in healthcare” projects aren’t aimed at solving problems. They’re aimed at checking boxes.
Auto-generating reports
Flagging coding errors
Pre-authorizing treatments via black-box models no one can audit
It’s compliance theater, now at scale.
If Galileo Were Alive, He’d Need a 483 Form
We laugh at how the Church rejected heliocentrism.
But today’s equivalent is building an AI that actually reduces mortality—then being told you can’t deploy it without FDA software labeling, HIPAA attestations, ONC interoperability certifications, and 12 months of legal review.
By the time it’s approved, the need is gone. The patients are gone.
The Anti-Science Movement in a Lab Coat
The worst part?
It’s marketed as science.
But it’s not peer-reviewed.
It’s not replicable.
And it’s not falsifiable.
It’s a closed loop of administrative self-preservation, where outcomes are inconvenient.
That’s Why I Build Outside the Loop
I’m not interested in arguing with the gatekeepers anymore.
I’m interested in building systems that work—where the experiment is the policy, and the data decides what survives.
If that resonates, you’re not alone.
Join the others building outside the loop:
Or read the last post:
The System Would Rather Collapse Than Be Helped
#HealthTech #Compliance #Science #Governance #Innovation #AI #DAO #SharpMethod #DOGE_HHS