It seems the latest accusation against the Stephen Harper government for orchestrating a "war on science" is at best stretching the details, and at worst, bordering on a hoax.

Last Friday, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada put out a press release headlined: "Harper Government Trashes Another Federal Science Library."

The union representing 15,000 federal scientists was drawing attention to the closure of a library at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Lethbridge Research Centre -- a move they suggest was inspired by "the Harper government's 'war on science.'"

"While some items appear to have been shipped to government facilities in Ottawa, on Monday most of the library's contents had been either discarded in a dumpster outside the building or sent to recycling," the release claims.

Union president Debi Daviau is quoted as saying: "The Harper government continues to target government science at every turn."

Accompanying the release are pictures of piles of documents lying in a dumpster, as if they're damning evidence. The pictures combined with the headline and Daviau's quote are clearly meant to evoke an image of Conservatives showing up with hired goons to trash the place.

But dig a little deeper and the story is not at all how it's being sold.

"For the Lethbridge library, the collection was evaluated by researchers, and all unique and relevant materials were relocated but will still be available for loan," James Watson, media relations officer for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, explained via e-mail.

"Items no longer considered relevant to AAFC and duplicates already in the AAFC collection were offered to employees and in some instances materials were offered to Library and Archives Canada."

"The remaining material declared surplus at the Lethbridge library has either been made available online, or had no continuing value according to researchers."

The disposal of files wasn't a political issue at all, as the union implied, but a job undertaken by department researchers -- who are members of the very union denouncing the process.

The files were either transferred or digitized. The ones completely discarded were those researchers deemed useless. Yet even then, the government says efforts were made to give these files to employees or move them to other libraries, and items were disposed of in compliance with multiple government acts and regulations.

How exactly is this boring tale of a library digitizing files and cleaning up its inventory -- something many libraries do -- a "war on science" story?

Peter Bleyer, special adviser to the union president, acknowledged in a phone interview that digitization does play a part in the story, but said "not all information that was deemed valuable has been preserved."

It seems like some research experts considered useful has been turfed without being digitized -- although neither the union nor government were able to provide any numbers.

What the union can't confirm though, and admits as much, is that there's any actual proof the library and its contents were in fact targeted by the Harper government -- which was the whole argument underlying the strongly worded press release.

"It's a question of perspective," Bleyer explained. "Our perspective is the perspective of the people we represent. They feel they're being treated as if they're not relevant."

But feelings and direct evidence are two different things, a distinction one would hope researchers and scientists can make better than most people.