Talented people with zero social skills proliferated in academia in the 1970s and 1980s. It's why we have the stereotype of the old befuddled professor - because it's based in reality. And, because there were significant structural barriers to anyone who wasn't white or could sound middlingly Jewish enough, it was a pretty shallow talent pool to compete with.

These dudes are probably still the plurality in the profession, and a huge number of them are shockingly massive assholes who think that they are where they are based on merit in a meritocratic system.

The old-white-guy head of a massive science department at a huge research university in Canada asked a female PhD student during a meeting (to which he had invited himself) whether her ripped jeans got that way from spending so much time on her knees.

That happened a couple months ago in Toronto. Shit's everywhere. Lots of academics should have been fired years and years and years ago.