Massimo Tistarelli was born on November 11, 1962 in Genoa, Italy. He received a degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Genoa, Italy in 1987 and the Phd in Computer Science and Robotics in 1991 from the same university. Since 1986 he has been involved as project coordinator and task manager in several projects on computer vision and biometrics funded by the European Community. Massimo Tistarelli is currently Full Professor in Computer Science and director of the Computer Vision Laboratory at the University of Sassari, Italy. His main research interests cover biological and artificial vision, biometrics, robotic navigation and visuo-motor coordination. He is author of more than 100 papers in scientific conferences, books and international journals. Prof. Tistarelli is the principal editor for the Springer book “Handbook of Remote Biometrics”, published in June 2009.
None of that has anything really to do with biology, genetics, or zoology. His opinion about evolution is not necessarily informed by anything in his expert knowledge.
Scientists may hold crank ideas outside of their areas of expertise. Barry Fell for instance was a professor of invertebrate zoology but was more wildly known for his pseudoscientific work in archaeology and linguistics.
"For any scientist to assume that because he is highly educated he cannot therefore be deluded nor deceived, is a grave error. The layman has much greater difficulty differentiating between the real scientists and the scientists who are simply — innocently — wrong and have chosen to take up residence in that fabled — and increasingly crowded — Ivory Tower. While a scientist in a free society has the same right as any other citizen to speak out on any topic he wishes, many reputable scientists choose to speak or write publicly on subjects outside their established fields of accomplishment or expertise. When a scientist purports to speak authoritatively outside his field of knowledge, he may then be exploiting his reputation — accomplishments and attributes — and playing on that reputation to extend his authority in a possibly unrelated field. An academic who has achieved credibility in the field of statistics cannot legitimately claim that he therefore speaks authoritatively on politics, nor that he is able to detect trickery. In today's society, we are very accustomed to see celebrities — all too often people in science — endorsing various products and services that have no relationship whatsoever to their professional lives, and motion picture stars sell soap and mortgage plans freely without arousing very much wonder from the public about why they are found on our TV screens and in our magazines performing this task. We are easily blinded by glamour and reputation, which often do not lend any validation whatsoever to such endorsements. This applies both to movie stars and to Ph.D.s." — James Randi.