I find the linguistic distinction to be better than you relate—to rationalize something is to start with something that isn’t rational. (As if it were rational, it wouldn’t need to be rationalized—it’s already there.)
That being said, rationalization in action isn’t always bad, because we don’t always have conscious understanding of the algorithm used to produce our conclusions. This would be like, to use your example, Einstein coming to the conclusion of relativity—and then attempting to understand how he got there. Rationalization in this case is a useful tool, as it is, in effect, an attempt to obtain the variables that originally went into the algorithm, perhaps to examine their validity.
If you already understand how you got to a conclusion which you are then attempting to bolster—if the evidence that is filtering evidence is being ignored—then it is precisely as bad as you say.
I find the linguistic distinction to be better than you relate—to rationalize something is to start with something that isn’t rational. (As if it were rational, it wouldn’t need to be rationalized—it’s already there.)
That being said, rationalization in action isn’t always bad, because we don’t always have conscious understanding of the algorithm used to produce our conclusions. This would be like, to use your example, Einstein coming to the conclusion of relativity—and then attempting to understand how he got there. Rationalization in this case is a useful tool, as it is, in effect, an attempt to obtain the variables that originally went into the algorithm, perhaps to examine their validity.
If you already understand how you got to a conclusion which you are then attempting to bolster—if the evidence that is filtering evidence is being ignored—then it is precisely as bad as you say.