Some elementary distinctions among, and comments concerning, the 'control' question 'test' (CQT) polygrapher's many...

Although the title of Honts et al.'s paper suggests that it will be a reply to the specific, logico-ethical problem of the CQT polygraph (the Polygrapher's Dilemma), the text deals only tangentially with this logico-ethical problem, and engages, instead, in a diffuse discussion of related, but different, ethical, methodological, and empirical problems of the CQT polygraph. This paper seeks to restore some clarity to the discussion by reminding us of certain basic distinctions among logico-ethical, ethical, methodological, and empirical problems. In the light of these distinctions, the relevant literature, and the essential characteristics of the CQT (which continue to be obscured by the use of systematically misleading terminology), I stand by my claim that, on the ethico-logical grounds (i.e. the CQT Polygrapher's Dilemma formulated in my 1993 paper [1]), as well as ethical, methodological, and evidential grounds (which have been detailed elsewhere), the CQT should be abandoned as a serious method of detecting deception, no matter how useful it may be to practitioners as an interrogatory prop.