The basic assumption is that the Professor was griefing other players. He wasn't. From the article, it did not appear as if he had the intent to deliberately harass and annoy other players. Instead, he was merely ignoring social customs and determining the best PvP strategies from there. Further, he was attempting to conduct a study. I am assuming (big assumption) that he was at least trying to be objective. In other words, there is nothing personal in what he was doing.
The stunning results isn't that there were people who backlashed at him so much as that, he perceived his actions as being impersonal, yet it seems many of the people on CoH ... and here on Hacker News ... perceive his actions as griefing. What is profound here is that this false perception generated an incredible amount of backlash. It is the same mechanism used in witchhunts. It looks like crowd sourcing has a downside too.
It implies that people still don't stop and consider whether the other person was doing it out of ignorance or simply because that other person ignores social conventions. The aggravation generated by this snowballs because people want something to blame. What is also interesting to me is how otherwise intelligent people automatically reacts to their own irritation.
This isn't pie in the sky stuff, either. Valve does it all the time with TF2, and that's a big part of what makes it such a good game. By being aware of how people use the game and working hard to maintain balance and stop overt exploits, they've created a controlled environment that still allows people to get extremely creative.
I now actively avoid any games with PvP that are so horribly designed that cultures develop with unwritten rules to overcome shortcomings in the game. And if you are playing a PvP game you should expect people to come up with creative tactics and strategies to win.