I'm in the Dr. Dave, Mike Page, Pat Johnson, Colin camp of skeptics.
I don't quite understand this system. Largely because it is incomplete in explaining how it really works.
As such, I think it's more of an estimation/visualization system - not an aiming system. An aiming system is one where there are concrete procedures that are well defined that produce repeatable results. That's absent from CTE. The critical mechanism of how the cue gets on line via "aiming system" is yet to be publicly defined.
That could be for a number of reasons.
1. Such an explanation simply does not exist because at that detailed level, the "system" isn't really a system or complete aiming system. It's something less. From an estimation system to possibly total hype.
2. It's a trade secret whose working details are not published because the system is sold as part of an instructional package.
3. It is actually a system and does work, but whose workings has not been fully defined yet, not even by it's founders/proponents.
I have serious doubts about possibility #3 because there are a lot of bright people who have been working on things like these for a long time. It stands to reason that these scientists and engineers would get to the bottom of the magic behind the system. Hasn't happened. Still, there was a time when a lot of what we know about the mechanics of pool were unknown or at least undefined in a scientific way.
Possibility #2 I find to be unlikely also, because few things stay secret in our world and this is even more of a factor in the Internet age. Only way this can work is if the students of those who know this system swear to secrecy and maintain it.
Possibility #1 is the most likely. I reason this because at the end of the day - there ABSOLUTELY MUST be geometric/mechanical explanation for how this system works. There must be a physical answer that can be quantified in terms of angles, degrees of movement or motion. The same way squirt, swerve and all of that have been diagrammed and explained completely, so too should CTE be explained.
Things just don't happen magically. After parsing through dozens and dozens of pages of various past CTE threads, when I filter out the gibberish and excessive verbiage what I find is that the proponents of CTE have nothing more than an arbitrary subjective type of answer that is no answer at all. They refer to pivoting and have no real answer as to how the adjustment is actually made.
Also, some keep throwing around this logical fallacy argument of "so and so pro uses it" ...who cares? I'm sure there are even more and greater champions that don't use it.
Just like Dr. Dave said, because nothing concrete or complete has been published, I have to remain a skeptic. I must always leave the door open to the possibility that it does work and that there is something to it and that it's a matter of me not knowing it. I accept the possibility. That's about it.
Unfortunately, I don't act on the basis of faith. At least not in the matter of pool & billiards.
If something concrete and definitive could be stated about CTE, then it could be put to the test. It could be tested in theory, such as modeled by diagram, computer or mathematics. Or it could be tested in reality by a pool playing robot. One of those stroke machines. That would eliminate the possibility of BIAS because humans have intuition and like it or not, humans will always make some kind of adjustments. Whether they do it consciously or subconsciously. The idea behind a system is not having to rely on intuition or "feel" ...but to have a definitive, complete procedural way that guarantees a predictable result.
Good Luck!