(belated reply:) You're right about the openness to criticism part, but there's another thing that goes with it: the communities that value critical thinking will respond to criticism by thinking more, and on occasion this will literally lead to the consensus reversing on the specific question. Without a strong commitment to rationality, however, frequently criticism is met by intransigence instead, even when it concerns the idea rather than the person.

Yes, people caught in anti-epistemological binds get less criticism - but they usually don't listen to criticism, either. Dealing with these is an unsolved problem.