Ah yes, the world is filled with people who will nitpick over minutiae just because they think what they know is definitive and certain. There's a story about a professor in England who went to the john, and wouldn't come out. So his students began to worry about him, thinking something had happened to him. They went to the lavatory to see what was the matter, and found their professor writing on the stall walls. Man is a creature of habits, and it is by habits that he defines himself.
Academics are in the habit of evaluating truth according to knowledge.
Those who are in the habit of being truthful through the heart will naturally tend to look for the meaning beneath the visible form, whereas those who are in the habit of seeking the truth of the letter will look for meaning in the form. That's why one shouldn't take habits lightly.