The doctor's story has overtones of Bruno Latour, a French anthropologist who has studied lab technicians as though they were shamans. Not simply reflecting the world, science constructs it in a way that makes the very act of science possible. Before it uncovers any 'truth', it must sterilise, disinfect, cable, insulate, pave, seal, grid, etc. As the official biographer of Louis Pasteur, Latour claims that the normal 'black box' argument about the difference between life inside and outside the laboratory cannot withstand scrutiny. With pasteurisation, the regime of the laboratory extends to the farmyard.
Science requires a grid of clean transport in order to function as a universal system of knowledge.
In order to function as a reliable knowledge factory, science must close its door on the outside world. No one has ever observed a fact, a theory or a machine that could survive outside of the networks that gave birth to them. Still more fragile than termites, facts and machines can travel along extended galleries, but they cannot survive one minute in this famous and mythical 'out-thereness' so vaunted by philosophers of science. For Latour, there is actually no 'out there' unmediated by the retinue of doorkeepers. The politician, the answering machine, the angel and the hole in the ozone layer are all mediators of greater forces.