Over-intellectualization can cause rationalization of otherwise atrocious things. Academic texts can be difficult to understand which can cause people to take away wrong conclusion, which can cause actual harm.

I'll give an example, let's say an economist says "Palestinian people are less productive than Israeli people". This statement causes harm, even though no harm was intended. Many people will interpret this as Palestinian people being less than Israeli people and embolden racist ideology. But the actual statement was a statement of fact because the economist has a different working definition of "productive": Palestinian people have less net output (likely from seizure of industrial equipment, less access to education, etc). Is it okay to explore the right for Israel to seize Palestinian land even in an intellectual way? Probably not, because we live in a world of science-as-a-religion with a lot of blind faith.