Any formation of an MSW would cause irreparable harm to the mad scientist status quo - and to the well-being of humanity itself.

Sure... most of you think mad scientist and instantly envision the world engulfed in flames, or jack booted thugs forcing everyone into the salt mines, or black holes accidently dropped in the center of the world. Heavens - you couldn't be farther from the truth! Without mad scientists we wouldn't have half the things we hold for granted today.

Let me look no farther than Tycho Brahe to defend my point. Was he a mad scientist? Hell yes! There's no two bones about it. This is a man who lost his nose after arguing mathematics with another deranged scientist. Face it, Tycho risked death or murder charges over a point of mathematics (the exact nature of the equation is not known). Rather than proving the point on paper like a even keeled scientist; Tycho and his opponent grew more and more embittered with each other until finally, not willing to let the difference fester any longer (it was already two weeks old) the two broke out swords and had it out in near complete darkness. Tycho's nose lose the argument.

You say that's not enough to earn his mad scientist street cred? Fine. Tycho employed a dwarf as a personal jester. Really. He also dabbled with alchemy so that he could both coat his copper nose with a silver/gold alloy and so he could create an ointment that he used to keep it in place. He fathered eight children, yet never married (mad scientists were the rock stars of early Europe). Tycho was a ball-fisted lunatic who owned his own island and terrorized the local peasantry; he even constructed a prison in his castle (Uraniborg - castle of the heavens) where he could lock up those who crossed him. Where do you think we get our Dr. Doom myths from? Expand the nose to a face plate and replace Denmark with Latveria and you've got Victor Von Doom, don't you?

Yet Tycho is the father of modern astronomy - he gave humanity the basis to our studies of the heavens, and implanted in Kepler (as if with some great metaphysical ovipositor) the urge to study the heavens.

Now look past Tycho... what of Tesla? or Feynman? Or any one of the crazed sputtering crackpots who's brilliance has illuminated the world like so many tons of critically compressed uranium? This is to say nothing of the Mad Businessmen, like Edison, sweat shop slave driver that he was.

Who would want to live in a future where those voices, those visions, those visitations were snuffed out before they had a chance to scar us permanently with their beautiful gift?

Not I. Never.