Walter Lewin gets himself (academically) executed for being a jerk: sexual harassment. I have heard anecdotes of similar behavior of Richard Feynman and of a prominent still living computer scientist who has made significant contributions to graph algorithms.
The uncomfortable question is, is there a causality between being a jerk and being intellectually productive? That is, if we suppress jerk-like behavior (perhaps suppressing its root cause whatever that may be) or prevent such people from attaining academic advancement, will we pay for it through less intellectual progress of civilization? (We note that this is, in principle, a testable hypothesis.)
The hypothesized mechanism is "willingness not to obey the mandates of the status quo". Such a willingness is critical for science: progress is necessarily breaking some previous way of thinking. There are of course some people who can maintain strict separation, a form of doublethink: "In this arena, I break the status quo; in this other arena I follow it." Hypothesize that those who can doublethink tend not to become truly great: those who become great have this rebellious mechanism more deeply hardwired in their personalities.
A sinister corollary is that perhaps suppressing intellectual progress of civilization is not merely an unintended consequence of suppressing jerk-like behavior: hypothesize it is the main point. Society needs servants, workers, non-rebels, people who obey in order to properly function: this is more important than intellectual progress.
(But I can also imagine ways these hypotheses could be false.)
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