A Form of Confirmation Bias Acute Among the Articulate and Studied

Confirmation bias is when someone defends an idea they already hold to be true or an idea they already believe to be false by selectively accepting or rejecting, respectively, new information evidence.

This usually happens when someone who believes in Belief A is presented with evidence that would seem to contradict a necessary premise of Belief A or the conclusion Belief A itself. This is done merely for the fact that the new evidence does not confirm or support Belief A. 

But there is another subtler form of confirmation bias: Explaining away or around new evidence rather than attempting to contradict or rebut new evidence by any means necessary. 

Most susceptible to this form of confirmation bias are those who have been endowed with a particular gift of language, whether written, spoken, or both. Those who express themselves with a greater command of language than the vast majority of people are not only more likely to convince people whose minds are sincerely open to new ideas; they are also more likely to convince themselves that new information, although interesting in its own way, is independent of their beliefs, such that it poses no threat to their belief.

Because such individuals are more likely both to convince others and to deceive themselves, they suffer this form of confirmation bias more acutely.

So, even if you may not be the most brilliant orator of your county, be wary of the distortion that can occur when your ability to articulate an idea or your confidence in the path of premises which led you to accept an idea threaten to induce ideological atrophy.