The current understanding of the 4 card flop rule I believe is to wash the 4 cards and pick 3 for the flop. The idea is to keep as much of the original flop as possible.

It seems to me that this procedure opens up the possibility for cheating.

Whomever is doing the washing would rather easily be able to make sure that any one of the 4 cards stayed on the flop. With some practice I imagine it would be easy to mechanic the flop of your choosing out of the 4 cards.

A player who used a code word or phrase could tell the washer which card he wants or which card to get rid of.

The situation comes up very rarely but it seems to me that since the players put in money preflop to see 3 random cards it should be fine and even preferred to wash the flop back into the muck and re shuffle then redo the flop.

This gives the players more information but that information is given to all players at the same time so it seems fair to me.

This goes against the "sacred order of the cards" but it seems to keep the integrity of the game in mind.

Thoughts and opinions?

I did a search, and it looks like a lot of people agree with you, some passionately so.

The TDA has a slightly different procedure:

That seems way better to me. Even if the dealer is honest, it's incredibly difficult to truly choose three random cards from four initially known positions. With the TDA rule, the floor might be in on the con with the dealer and a player as co-conspirators, but in that case you were probably always screwed.

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the reply.

This happened to me in Omaha yesterday and the dealer just picked up what I believe was the fourth card, but I wasn't really sure. I was surprised no one at the table said anything, and dealer seemed confident enough so I guess he was sure. Hand was inconsequential and it was a tournament so I was content to let it go, but I knew that was wrong by the dealer. Funny enough, the remaining flop was all hearts so if it was hold'em it would have been a bigger deal than it was, since no one had two hearts

The procedure should be as I fixed it above. The dealer should never be doing this on his own and a neutral party should be picking the burn. It is a good procedure.

The idea, as with a premature turn, is to mess with the deck/stub as little as possible. Shuffling can expose cards. Shuffling errors can send cards flying exposing a lot of cards.

As a floor, sometimes my dealer absolutely knows which card was "extra". As in she sometimes knows that the 3rd and 4th card stuck together as she pulled them off the stud, meaning the 3rd card on the felt is the extra. Normally this is also discovered before the flop is turned over, so there is no complaining. Otherwise we do the wash procedure as described above.

Most normal procedure IME is:
IF the dealer is absolutely certain which card was the fourth card, it becomes a burn card and other 3 cards stay. Usually the players will accept this, NBD.
If dealer is unsure, TDA procedure as above. (I have seen this supported by floors even when one of the players objected).
There are a lot easier and less attention-getting ways to cheat than to deal an extra card on the flop and then try to control which one is discarded.

Ideally the floor should turn his back,
while the dealer is scrambling the four cards.
Then turn back around and pick a card for the burn.
IMO.

If floor and dealer are colluding to help a player win, there are better ways than 4 card flops.

Are you saying that the standard way to handle a 4 card flop is for the dealer to wash the 4 cards and then pick 3 for the flop? If so, you would be wrong. The proper procedure is for the dealer to wash the cards and then the floor would pick one of them to be the next burn card. Never would the same person wash and pick. I see zero problems with it.