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I think that this type of thing is fairly common and that it frequently makes good short term business sense to spend a lot of money on shills. I'm a little shocked about all the think tanks involved, but perhaps that's just because I'm naive about think tanks.
The natural solution would be for organizations to provide complete funding disclosure, which could then be taken into account when evaluating the information on the merits. However, I suspect complete disclosure will never be forthcoming and the merits are often too complicated for the average person. We are put at a great disadvantage by the fact the the world is much more complex than our ability to understand it. And also to that there are giant money reservoirs who have decided that it is in their best interest to exploit our ignorance.
Perhaps in this context, where it should be assumed that a significant portion of the information on a topic is corrupt from the get-go, it makes sense to plug one's ears and scream lalalallalalalalalalala. But maybe not.
Isn't there some old saying "trust, but verify"?
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