string with double quotes breaks pager

Follow Funnelback documentation to search using a double-quoted string that returns more than 1 page of results.

The first page renders ok but the render array for the funnelback pager has a ""double-double-quote"" around the query attribute's value.
i.e. something like this:

{array} [2]
 #summary = {array} [6]
  base_url = "https://X.clients.funnelback.com/"
  end = {int} 10
  page_size = {int} 10
  query = ""multiple sclerosis""      <========= problem!
  start = {int} 1
  total = {int} 26
 #theme = "funnelback_pager"

result is that Drupal's render() generates links for the pager template to use, such as this:
next_link = "?query="multiple+sclerosis"&start_rank=11"
and all the user sees is "?query="

Therefore the previous, next, first and last links are broken.