@pollyb Heya Polly!
It's not uncommon to see this sort of thing when looking a backlink data at a granular level. The data isn't updated live as crawling and indexing the web is quite a heavy load on resources to it takes time to gather and "crunch"
The most important thing here is to make sure that you're using the Spam Score tool and data in the most helpful way possible. If you're exploring spammy sites linking to your site, and you're finding that they don't exist then * dusts hands * job done.
Please also note that 'disavowing' links won't impact your own site's spam score as we don't have insight into which links are 'disavowed'.
If you're investigating improving your own site's Spam Score then I would recommend taking some time to explore which of the 27 flags you are triggering. We have a great guide on our Help Hub outlining what you can do to reduce your Spam Score
If you're still stuck please reach out to our help team help [@] Moz.com
Best,
Jo