Abstract :
In recent years, a plethora of fraudulent papers have been published in medical and scientific journals, which have been retracted by the editors sometime after their publication. The dilemma that this type of dishonesty poses for science in general, and for journal editors in particular, must give pause for reflection. In this essay, I shall briefly review fraud and plagiarism which are serious scientific research misconducts, and dishonesty, which concerns manipulation or suppression of some data. The topics which will not be discussed, however, are publications concerning parapsychology; alternative medicine; intelligent design, or other such subjects which do not follow a strict scientific methodology and are deemed to fall out with the mainstream of scientific worldview.
