This discussion of 'debunk' reminded me of the confusion between 'refute' and 'rebut'. These are both semi-technical terms, so there is some authority for saying there are right and wrong meanings of them.
If someone accuses you of purloining the pewter charger, you can deny, rebut, or refute the accusation, but these three are different. Merely to say 'I deny that' does thereby deny it. 'Deny' is wholly performative.
You can't rebut it by saying 'I rebut that', since rebuttal is the presentation of evidence: but evidence, not proof. If you present some evidence to support your denial, you have thereby rebutted it, even if the evidence is unconvincing or untrue.
Finally, refutation is successful denial. A rebuttal, or other attempt at refutation, fails to refute something unless the evidence is true (and, I think, convincing).
If you assert that A refutes B, you are asserting (inter alia) that B is false, not just that A makes that claim. (And A may be a person or their text.)
Debunking is like this: to assert that A debunks B is to assert (inter alia) that B is bunk.
What led me to this was noticing that some adverbs are ruled out by virtue of this secondary assertion. Or rather, the person A who asserts 'B' can use them, but the person C who reports this assertion can't. If A thinks the Moon Landings are bunk and fills a book with evidence they find convincing, they can say 'In my book I debunk the Moon Landings', but I can't echo them: I have to add a qualifier like 'claims to' or 'attempts to'.
But A's usage is a correct and reasonable use of the word 'debunk', in their own mind. They genuinely and sincerely think they have debunked it.
I can report this using 'genuinely' and 'sincerely', but I can't use 'reasonably' or 'correctly'. I recognize that their usage of the word is reasonable or correct, but I can't phrase it as 'A correctly said they debunked the Moon Landings', even if all I want to do is endorse their language as correct, not their facts. The adverb is ambiguous in what it applies to: whereas 'sincerely' would unambiguously refer to A's beliefs.
I was minded to extend our usual grammar along the lines of the technical terms 'rule-utilitarianism' and 'act-utilitarianism'. We could take about usage-correctness and fact-correctness. Then I can with a clear conscience assert that A usage-correctly said they debunked the Moon Landings.
