The notion of the expert has recently undergone a shift in value, from veneration to disdain, usually accompanied by a litany of examples of the failures and misconduct of professionals. In contexts as diverse as Brexit, climate change and preventive vaccination, one encounters a palpable distrust of experts and a growing tendency to ignore their advice. Are we really witnessing the “death of the expert,” or are the laments about an “assault on science” merely a hysterical reaction by elites who feel their status threatened? For sociologist Gil Eyal, what needs explaining is not a one-sided distrust of experts but a Janus-faced phenomenon: an unprecedented dependence of politics on science and expertise on one side, coupled with growing skepticism toward scientific findings on the other. Eyal analyses the present loss of trust as another turn in a recurring crisis of legitimacy: the “scientization of politics” that critics warned of in the 1960s has in turn brought about a politicization of science, the two processes reinforcing one another in an unstable, crisis-prone interplay.