From a reader:

Hey, Jonah,
The Amy Bishop case reminds me of a guy in my field, Valery Fabrikant. He shot four and killed four people at Concordia U. in Montreal in 1992. He acted plenty strange even before this happened [From Wikipedia]:
Later analysis concluded that “Fabrikant often displayed classic behavioral warning signs indicating potential violence. Within three years of the university’s hiring him, Fabrikant had established a reputation of being “a difficult, argumentative and unpredictable individual- and one who seemed to set no limits on his own behavior.” The university failed to address his behavior early on, and his harassment of students and colleagues increased over the years. The university attempted to change its guidelines for dealing with personnel. The case showed the problems of academic institutions, whose administrators were more used to assessing research, than in managing the behavior of difficult staff.
Note the last sentence. Really weird thing is that the guy continues to publish, and in some of the best journals (his title is now “Prisoner #167932 D, Archambault Jail, Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec Canada J0N 1H0”). You can even send him an email, pointing out his math mistakes- go ahead, I double-dare you . . .
On the other hand, some of the best researchers are a bit strange — definitely helps to “think outside the box.” Of course, there need to be boundaries set — Fabrikant should have been fired long before the shooting incident. I suspect that part of the problem was that his colleagues were a bit afraid of him.
Last point — Amy Bishop’s case also confirmed a theory of mine. If you went to Harvard and do something wrong, that point will be mentioned in the first sentence of any story about you (“Harvard-trained Amy Bishop . . .”). If she had a Ph.D. from Ohio State, do you think that the stories would have started with “OSU-trained Amy Bishop . . .”? Same thing goes for former Marines: “Joe Blow, ex-Marine, killed fourteen people . . .” Since I both have a Ph.D. from Harvard and am a former Marine, I try to keep my head down . . .