Speciousness ruined story about wrecked ship (9)
I believe the answer is:
sophistry
'speciousness' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'ruined story about wrecked ship' is the wordplay.
'ruined' indicates an anagram.
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'wrecked' is an anagram indicator.
'story' with letters rearranged gives 'sotry'.
'ship' is an anagram of 'phis'.
'sotry' going around 'phis' is 'SOPHISTRY'.
(Other definitions for sophistry that I've seen before include "Subtle but misleading reasoning" , "Deceitful use of fallacious arguments" , "using misleading arguments" , "tortured reasoning" , "Made-up arguments" .)