Overall I'd say that intellectuals are MORE susceptible to conformity manipulations. PhDs and MDs have done nothing but conform to attain the highest levels of their fields.

How do you get into a PhD program? Good grades and acceptable ideas. How do you get good grades? Absorb the information and regurgitate it. How do you get acceptable ideas? Believe what you're told. This occurs at every level of education. So what happens when you inject cancerous social ideas into that information stream and then grade students on that material? You get intellectuals who are well credentialed but can't think. Since credentials are proxy for intelligence, those who have no way of assessing the information themselves listen to the "experts" with credentials and those experts simply believe what they're told to believe.