I pondered a long time whether or not I should read this book. In retrospect, I think I made the wrong choice in deciding to read it. I was disappointed by the way the argument is structured. The authors begin in chapters 1 and 2 with a "periodic table of expertise". There's nothing periodic about it and its logic seemed confused to me. But even so, the discussion that follows in chapters 3 and 4 provides a reasonable review of various types of knowledge, with particular emphasis on the "interactional expertise" that trumps everyday knowledge but falls short of "contributory expertise".

The concept of interactional expertise is indeed interesting. However, I couldn't understand why the authors wanted to connect it to things like "embodiment", deafness, color blindness or perfect pitch in later parts of the book. I think they stray too far from scientific expertise into vague domains like social psychology. Chapter 5 on demarcating science from non-science also seemed quite naive. I don't think Wittgenstein's linguistic idea of family resemblance can be a satisfactory demarcation criterion, and the authors' obscure conceptualization of science as a "form of life" certainly does more harm than good.

For the most part this book is clearly written and the authors have obviously put a great deal of work into it. The problem is that they steer their work in an uninteresting direction. I would have like to see a much greater emphasis on political questions and on "meta-expertise". Instead the authors work the concept of "interactional expertise" towards more psychological questions, which simply didn't interest me at all.