Ever since details started coming out last Friday night local time of a disaster unfolding at the Astroworld festival in the USA, a rumour started to spread on social media that a security guard at the venue was injected with drugs. I chose not to report it, because I found the idea implausible.

Allow me to explain why. For starters, some drugs are very expensive. If you’ve managed to smuggle them past security, it doesn’t then make sense to effectively give the drugs to another person. And it would also be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stick an injection in the right area at the right time on a moving target.

The theory just didn’t make sense to me. Such critical thinking, however, appears to be absent in the case of Houston Police boss Troy Finner. At a press briefing on the Saturday, he repeated this theory. By doing so, he gave it a credence it didn’t deserve – and it ended up being reported far and wide across the mainstream media.

That same mainstream media is now looking very stupid – because it turns out it was complete nonsense. After police spoke to the man who made the claim, the whole thing has been retracted. Finner told the press at a briefing yesterday the story was “not consistent” with being injected against one’s own will.

Just don’t expect any of them to hold their hands up and apologise for spreading this rubbish. I notice with interest the dance music press didn’t fall for the story – I can’t possibly think why…