Sometimes, says Michael Egnor (below right), misrepresentation may be deliberate because Libet’s work doesn’t support a materialist perspective:
Yes, the misinterpretation is very common and it’s almost routine to read or to hear Libet’s work being described as scientific evidence for the absence of free will. Which is bizarre because Libet himself explicitly endorsed the reality of free will, emphatically he endorsed the reality of free will. And Libet point out that his research unequivocally supports the reality of libertarian free will. But his experiments are described very often both in the scientific literature and in the popular press as supportive of materialism—which is something that they don’t support and something that Libet made very clear was not his conclusion.
Michael Egnor, “How Libet’s free will research is misrepresented” at Mind Matters News