Because medicine was captured by government and turned into a bureaucracy where following orders, rote memorization and following “standard of care” formulas are the requirements for success?
Discussion
Yes.
And maybe due to the inconvenient fact that doctors are as sheepish as the rest of the majority of any population, doctors or not.
I doubt that independent thinking is learned; it’s more a part of a personality type that is too rare.
But of course the culture of any organisation is important, and if the culture is rewarding following orders, lays emphasis on bureaucracy and rote memorization instead of rewarding independant thinking, this is what you get, especially if you have a group of relatively high iq individuals, that can implement the programming effectively.