Below is a link to a great article about academics being co-opted by "New Religious Movements".  Here are just a few interesting passages:

Within the past several years, questionable relationships have developed between social scientists and several controversial new religious groups -- most notably The Family (formerly Children of God [COG]), Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), and Scientology. These organizations recognize that supportive social scientists are powerful allies in their efforts both to gain societal legitimacy and to silence critics. For their part, some social scientists appear to overlook their own unique position and value as legitimizing resources in the attempts by religious ideological groups and their oppositional organizations to secure social recognition and acceptance. About this situation, Marybeth Ayella warns that "co-optation of the researcher can be a major problem for the unaware researcher, because he or she can become, without intent, a 'counter' in the ongoing stigma contests" between religiously ideological organizations and their countermovements (1990, 574; see also Robbins and Robertson, 1991).

With a critical eye toward recent events, this article examines research issues involving the scholarly study and public representation of some alternative religious. Specifically, it argues that, on crucial social issues, controversial religious groups have courted researchers in order to enhance their public images, and some social scientists have participated in these efforts at the expense both of legitimate endeavors to advance knowledge according to accepted scientific standards of objectivity and of due attention to the use of their scientific expertise.

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Former members of The Family, as well as some of The Family's own publications, provide important insights into the group's "backstage" arrangements that went on prior to contact that AWARE researchers had with it. The Family invited academics and other "Systemites" to what it called "Media Homes" (Kent, 1996c, 68). A former member who was familiar with these homes described such a place as "basically a nice, squeaky clean, polished-up home [which was] about as polished as you could get" (Kent, 1996b, 157-158). Another former member reported that part of making "everything look as perfect as possible" at the Media Homes required "mega-preparation" such as moving out crowded children, removing bunkbeds from overcrowded bedrooms, and placing single mothers elsewhere (Kent, 1996a, 39-40). The same former member claimed that The Family "only kept the best PR people there...the people who were, you know, prepared to talk and, you know, knew how to talk and wouldn't, you know, slip up or whatever" (Kent, 1996a, 39). In order to avoid revealing sensitive information, Family spokespersons underwent intensive rehearsals of "questions and answers -- what to say about this, what to say about that" (Kent, 1996b, 155). The Family even produced several booklets of anticipated questions along with appropriate answers and maintained strict security regarding which among its publications members could provide to "Systemites" for perusal (Family Services, 1989, 1992a, 1992b; Berg, 1983, 432-468).

Another way that The Family controlled information that researchers acquired was by destroying controversial sexual material involving children. In 1991 The Family's World Services department issued a directive entitled "The Pubs Purge," which ordered an "extensive purge of [particular] publications" by burning or blocking out portions "with ink or white-out as well as the specific pages that should be removed from within the remaining books" (World Services, 1991). The documents purge was not motivated by the organization's denunciation of Berg's teachings, but rather by the realization that these publications provided the group's critics with evidence that child/adult sex had been allowed. Consequently, the directive never acknowledged any harm from the sexual practices, but blamed the need for the purge on "them that [sic] are defiled & and unbelieving" (World Services, 1991, 2). Not surprisingly, therefore, when AWARE researchers and others conducted their study of media homes and examined the group's publications in other Family facilities, they found nothing amiss. One researcher contributing to the AWARE study, for example, stated that: "[a] study of a cupboardful of COG to Family literature was undertaken with the assistance of a YA [Young Adult] who pointed out important passages in the Mo Letters, the Book of Remembrance and the children's comic, Life With Grandpa" (Palmer, 1994, 9).

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Linkages between some social scientists and the controversial groups they study have interfered with or influenced fundamental aspects of the social scientific enterprise. Interference or influence has occurred with the publication process, the selection of research topics, the acquisition of research information, and the use of that information in contentious social disputes. In the process, social science has suffered, and the reputation of the social science of religion has been placed at risk (Esquire, 1997; Radio 4, 1989; Straits Times, 1997). Peer reviewed research has been blocked, published accounts seem tainted with bias, former members' information has been ignored or summarily dismissed, and both political and public relations agendas have been interwoven with the social scientific study of religion.

Some of the most respected scholars involved in the academic study of religion have let down their guards, and groups with agendas have only been too willing to draw them in. A consequence of this is that these scholars provide support for ideologies whose rigidity and intellectual narrowness threaten the necessary climate of openness and exchange in which scholarship thrives.