When the editors of two of the most prominent medical journals in the world--the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)--were fired in the same year, under circumstances that ranged from acrimonious to politically sensational, media attention again focused on biomedical publication. The controversy highlighted yet another ethical dimension of scientific research and its publication, topics that have generated intense scrutiny in recent years. As research funding has become scarcer and competition fiercer, with links between...