I think this is not a great example, as there’s a huge group of people that, in fact, does not agree with the consensus and would happily fund research that (tries to) prove otherwise.
I fully agree with your point, though, just not the example.
...and it really did backfire (in public relations, politics, etc)
now... I don't think they can actually fund 'research-for-their-profit' -- I mean, would you believe "petro is good for earth" research coming from oil companies, even after the 'lead is good or neutral' research?
Not uncritically, but if the research presents a logically consistent hypothesis, and evidence supporting it, then it would be worth following up on with independent groups and if it remains consistent to scrutiny then it should be accepted.
That's how science works.
“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.”
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/after_climate_research_phy...
If you haven’t read up on both, it’s hard to appreciate how unlike climate science is from the beta amyloid theory. The latter has some evidence but there were always alternate theories by serious researchers because it involved multiple systems which scientists were still working to understand and basic questions around causation and correlation had significant debate.
In contrast, climate scientists reached consensus about climate change four decades ago and by now have established many separate lines of evidence which all support what has been the consensus position. More importantly, since the 1970s they have been making predictions which were subsequently upheld by measured data from multiple sources. The ongoing research is in fine-tuning predictions, estimating efficacy of proposed interventions, etc. but nobody is seriously questioning the basic idea.
Almost all of the people you hear dismissing climate change are funded by a handful of companies like Exxon, whose own internal research showing climate change was a significant threat produced a chart in 1982 which has proven accurate:
https://skepticalscience.com/pics/Exxonpredictions.png
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-resea...
The few examples of research driven from the skeptic PoV (eg: urban heat skewing, etc) have landed on the side of the AGW consensus.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
If anything the current consensus on the scientific front lines is that the alarmism is understated, and the real orthodoxy is astroturfed denial of the facts.
The global fossil industry is worth around $11 trillion a year. It supports some of the worst regimes in the world.
Of course they're going to try to FUD away the science, with the usual copy-paste narratives about how it's really scientists and academics who are corrupt.
It's all about money, power, and entitlement. Not about truth or responsibility.
But no amount of PR nonsense, astroturfing, and false accusation is going to make the slightest difference to climate reality.