The authors are well beyond PhD level. They are supervising PhD students and post-doctoral fellows.

http://sonnenburglab.stanford.edu/people.html

Look, I haven't read the book in particular. All I'm saying is that the success outcome of a book has completely different requirements than the success outcome of an academic paper. It's entirely possible that the most well-educated person in a field writes a book that is more interesting to read than it is well-proven.

Even so, I don't personally have enough background in the area to tell you much more than they publish in Journals with a reasonable impact factor. I can assume they know what they are talking about, but no matter the school, no matter the prestige, they could still be wrong and/or poor researchers and/or poor writers. They study ultra-specific things within an ultra-specific field.

Personally, I'd probably enjoy the book.

I don't understand why you're arguing about a book you haven't read.

> no matter the prestige, they could still be wrong and/or poor researchers and/or poor writers

Sure, but those are generalizations, and they don't apply in this case. As you would know if you could be bothered to read it...