To say that spokespersons for individuals or organizations refuted charges laid against those individuals or those organizations is to say much more than that they denied these charges and apparently believed that what they were saying was the truth. Rather, it is to say that they deployed sufficient evidencing reasons for believing that the charges were in fact false. If you do not want to say as much as that, then you should take the trouble to be noncommittal. You ought in that case to say only that these spokespersons claimed to have refuted the charges in question.
(Antony Flew, How to Think Straight: An Introduction to Critical Reasoning, 2d ed. [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998], 30)
Note from KBJ: The difference being marked by Flew is that between refutation and rebuttal. A refutation is a successful or effective rebuttal. (Conversely, a rebuttal is an attempted refutation.) For example, the monk Gaunilo rebutted St Anselm's ontological argument. Whether he refuted it is controversial, with some philosophers thinking he did and some thinking he didn't. (I'm one of the latter.) Another way to look at it is that refutation, unlike rebuttal, is a success concept.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 