I do think your professor was in the wrong here.
He shouldn't have accepted research money from big oil. That's a very, very clear conflict of interest.
I don't think he was demonized or made a pariah because his research went against prevailing opinions, I'm fairly certain he was demonized and made a pariah because he showed extremely bad judgment.
There's plenty research showing that industry funding introduces bias:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447808/?tool=pubmed
http://www.cochrane.org/news/blog/how-well-do-meta-analyses-disclose-conflicts-interests-underlying-research-studies
He shouldn't have accepted research money from big oil. That's a very, very clear conflict of interest.
I don't think he was demonized or made a pariah because his research went against prevailing opinions, I'm fairly certain he was demonized and made a pariah because he showed extremely bad judgment.
There's plenty research showing that industry funding introduces bias:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447808/?tool=pubmed
http://www.cochrane.org/news/blog/how-well-do-meta-analyses-disclose-conflicts-interests-underlying-research-studies