Sciros,

...but would you not agree that companies like Exxon *should* be actively researching issues that they may be directly involved in?

Sure. But based on past evidence of tobacco companies researching the effects of cigarette smoke, and the conclusions they reach, one has to question the validity of those results.
I try not to push any agenda on the students. Except that they question the information presented to them, including the info I provide them.
I was just teaching them about Bloom's taxonomy of higher order thinking skills this morning.
Knowledge>Understanding>Application>Analysis>Synthesis> Evaluation or Judgement.
Determining what the facts are is the crucial first step. Although there are many facts that are not in dispute, making sense of what those facts mean and coming to a reasonable conclusion does take a bit of critical/higher order thinking.
I am not here to provide answers for my students; I just try to get them to think about questions in more meaningful ways.