The deliberate use of science to deceive others

As tobacco industry disinformation is spread throughout the internet, and tobacco industry-funded scientists use an array of venues and tactics to disseminate memes contrary to public health research, I stumbled upon an article from the Heartland Institute. This article (available at http://blog.heartland.org/2017/02/crops-and-carbon-dioxide-the-connectio... text copied below for archive) titled "Crops and Carbon Dioxide: The Connection is Clear," takes a perfectly fine botanical study about the effects of very low concentrations of ambient CO2 on the growth of certain species of plants, and extrapolates this innocuous study to infer that more CO2 means more plant growth.
Let's have a look at the text:
 

Numerous studies and laboratory experiments have shown that plants grown under higher carbon dioxide levels than at present do better — grow faster, bigger, use water more efficiently — than crops grown under atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This is hardly surprising since most plants, including the progenitors of modern crop varieties, evolved at times when carbon dioxide levels on earth were much higher than today.
In a recent study, scientists examined a different question, how do crops fare under conditions of lower carbon dioxide, particularly carbon dioxide levels experienced during the most recent ice age.
The study in Global Change Biology examines the effect of lower carbon dioxide levels on plant growth. The researchers grew one type of wheat, wild barley, and two types of millet from seed to harvest in a controlled environment under two carbon dioxide levels, 180 parts per million (ppm), the level of carbon dioxide during the last glacial maximum, and 270 ppm, corresponding to the levels carbon dioxide reached after the most recent ice age but before the industrial revolution.
The research showed grain production for every crop was significantly lower under 180 ppm of carbon dioxide than under 270 ppm. Wheat yields were 32 percent lower, barley yields 34 percent lower, broomcorn millet yields 9 percent lower, and foxtail millet yields 23 percent lower. The researchers also found the crops had “depressed values of light-saturated rates of photosynthesis, reduced seed germination rates, and a decline in water use efficiencies at the lower, as opposed to the higher, CO2 concentration.”
 

What we have here, is a classic case of disinformation. The first paragraph, bolded, is completely discontinuous with the actual biological study used for evidence. The study looked at extremely low concentrations of ambient CO2, 180 parts per million, versus pre-industrial levels of CO2 (270 ppm), and found that plants do better in pre-industrial environments than inconceivably low concentrations of CO2. We are currently at more than 400 ppm in our atmosphere in 2017.
 
So, what are the main flaws in Burnett's analysis? They are many. First, and most central is the fact that the relationship between plant flourishing and CO2 concentrations is not linear, as insinuated, but hyperbolic, as in the below figure.
 
 
 
 
If atmosphere concentrations of CO2 are too low, plants suffer. If it's too high, plants suffer. If it's around pre-industrial levels (270ppm), we have happy plants. 
But this is not new news. In the very same issue from which this twisted version of the finding was cherry-picked and misinterpreted, we also find that "Decreased photosynthesis and growth with reduced respiration in the model diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum grown under elevated CO2 over 1800 generations," as one paper title explains. So, the second fallacy in this article is that all plants react the same in different conditions. That's like saying, that all mammals thrive under similar conditions--a ridiculous concept. 
 
Is it any wonder that this particular paper which Burnett picked up to distort also was picked up by the climate denier website "CO2 Science"? Probably not. While CO2 Science's treatment of the paper leaves the intended misinterpretation aside (presumably the website's context and its clientele's bias to misinterpret science as linear and universal rather than according to non-linear or punctuated-equilibrium analyses, it seems as if the fake news echo chamer is quite proficient at presenting information and letting their already pre-disposed audience run with the possible "implications."
 
See DeSmog Blog's analysis of CO2 Science. The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has apparently received over $100,000 from ExxonMobile and was ranked 8 on Mother Jones' 2009 list of the “Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial.” DeSmog Blog also reports on the fact that CO2 Science and the Heartland Institute are connected. So we have come full circle, with the trolls of science repeating their same obfuscatory message with increased shrillness the further they get from the actual source. 
 
This is the reference paper that is being mined for climate denial purposes. Perhaps the authors have something to say about it?
Cunniff, J., Jones, G., Charles, M. and Osborne, C. 2017. Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to subambient CO2: a test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture. Global Change Biology 23: 380-393