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In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word "experts" from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts' many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the "death of expertise," or is the handwringing about an "assault on science" merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided "mistrust of experts" but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased suspicion, skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings, expert opinion or even whole branches of investigation, on the other. The current mistrust of experts, Eyal argues, is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The "scientization of politics," of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, specifically of regulatory and policy science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. Eyal demonstrates that the strategies designed to respond to the crisis - from an increased emphasis on inclusion of laypeople and stakeholders in scientific research and regulatory decision-making to approaches seeking to generate trust by relying on objective procedures such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) - end up exacerbating the crisis, while undermining and contradicting one another.

What is mizrahanut? a methodological introduction -- The Jews underneath the Arab's mask: the experience of the Orient in the prestate period -- The field of Orientalist expertise before 1948 -- The struggle over jurisdiction, 1948-1953 -- The discourse about the Arab village -- Military intelligence and Middle Eastern studies

It is a "well-known secret" in Israel that scholars of Middle Eastern studies are heavily involved with military intelligence: they serve their reserve duty there, provide research services for it, and when they are interviewed in the media, they speak with the authority of those "in the know." The fact that such relations exist, therefore, is well known and in itself is not the problem this article sets out to investigate. My question is rather about the causes and significance of this phenomenon: why did academics, who are supposedly committed to disinterested research, become involved in military intelligence work? And why did military intelligence, this most hardheaded and secretive of government agencies, come to draw upon the expertise of historians and philologists? Finally, what are the consequences of such "dangerous liaisons" between military intelligence and Middle Eastern studies?