Lyon said child subjects in studies by Ceci and others were questioned much more suggestively than are children in actual child abuse investigations.

In response, Ceci and Friedman describe field research showing that investigators-even very experienced ones-routinely obtain information by asking children leading and suggestive questions.

Lyon also argued that children tend not to acquiesce to false suggestions that they have been molested. This argument is based on the work of psychologist Gail Goodwin, whom Lyon called the "researcher-heroine of the child protection movement."

Ceci and Friedman answer that Goodwin's results actually support Ceci's and his colleagues'. Some of the children Goodwin studied did acquiesce to abuse-related suggestions. Lyon's disagreement with Ceci and others may amount to a disagreement about whether the glass is half empty or half full.

Ceci and Friedman agree with Lyon that suggestive child interviewing increases the chance of eliciting a true abuse allegation-and also increases the chance of eliciting a false one. In considering how suggestive questioning ought to be, then, one is weighing two harms: failure to detect child abuse versus conviction of the innocent.