According to BBC News, the head of the engineering firm Weir Group has said that the nascent shale gas industry is on the back foot because of all the disinformation that is being put out:
Spin is "beating science" in the debate over fracking in Scotland, the head of the Weir Group has claimed.
Keith Cochrane, chief executive of the engineering firm, said that he feared Scotland would be left behind in the global market place.
You can see his point, particularly as the BBC has provided a perfect example of the spin Mr Cochrane was talking about, accompanying the story with a box that is indistinguishable from the worst kind of environmentalist disinformation. Has anyone else noticed that this same set of half-truths accompanies almost every BBC news story on unconventional oil and gas?
I have pointed this out to more than one senior journalist at the BBC and while they didn't dispute that it is misleading they don't seem to feel they have any responsibility to see it corrected because they were not personally responsible for authoring it.
Your taxes at work.