Talking of the NYT, it ran this AP piece headed Powell Refutes Report Saying U.S. Overstated Iraq Threat. The body of the article makes it clear that Powell said he disagreed but produced nothing that would prove the report false (in debating terms, he rebutted the article, but in logical terms, he did not refute it).
At least in educated Australian English the use of “refute” for “deny” is still, I think, unacceptable. Has the language changed in the US, or has the NYT slipped up on this one?
Update watch 13 game of death in divx download hottie and the nottie the free Reader Sven notes that the NYT has changed “refutes” to “dismisses”. The blogosphere at work or just the sub-editors coming back from a long lunch?
John Quiggin 
John – ‘refute’ is definitely not a synonym for ‘deny’ or ‘rebut’, but unfortunately in the Australian media I think we find it is more often than not used as such, in just the same way as the NYT. (esteemed columnsts for the AFR excepted from this generalisation about australian media).
I can almost date when this happened. I was working in Parliament House in the early 1980s as legislative assistant for a Labor politician – a job that involved among other things drafting numerous press releases. I couldn’t say who started it, but various offices in both government and opposition began using the “refute” word as the header for any statement denying something. I asked around among the more experienced staffers (being relatively junior at the time). I was told to use ‘refute’ instead of ‘rebut’ because most journalists no longer knew the difference, and sub-editors were not picking it up any more: so there was a good chance of getting a headline claiming your guy had actually refuted some argument when all they had done was argued the contrary side. (bear in mind that most news reporting then – and I’m not sure it has improved – consisted of taking a press release and rewriting a word or two).
Unfortunately I think the tactic has been too clever by half – now very few readers know the difference either, and ‘refute’ has lost much of its force, with only a handful of people understanding its logical usage.
Stephen, I remember well – it was Hawkie who made this flagrant misuse of the term popular. It was one of his favourite words.
I can’t stand it when people say, “I refute that absolutely.”
In english words often change their meanings by misuse. Ie crazy– covered in cracks, and panoply– a suit of amour.
Quiggin gets results — “refutes” has been changed to “dismisses.”
As far back as the 60s, one of Hawke’s closest union associates [a man always very conscious of trying to appear as impressive as possible]invariably used the word “refute” instead of deny; and Hawke seemed to acquire the pracice from him. I always felt that in addition to making less sophisticated listeners feel they’d heard something more impressive than it really was, it had the effect of helping to discourage waverers from pursuing a contrary argument.
Nowadays, of course, it’s “old-fashioned” to suggest that precision in word meaning is even relevant, let alone important.
Like most wrongness, I think this was first used/perpetrated by Tories.