There are number of concepts like personality, intelligence, motivation etc. in social sciences, how these were established to be accepted by all. I mean what could be the methodology accepted to the academic circles for declaring find of a new concept.
I would imagine the following criteria need to be met:
Conceptual validity - how does it differ from existing concepts? (is there really nothing new under the sun?) and the nature and strength of evidence for its conceptual differentiation from similar or related concepts. How do you demonstrate it is not a rehash of some other concept or combinations thereof?
A new conceptual area (of the same level as personality, intelligence or memory, for example) would be extraordinary after 150 of psychological research, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So the case would need to be substantial.
Repeatability: The evidence must be consistent,across time and different groups.
Theory: There should be a theoretical basis to the concept, within an evolutionary plausibility framework, and testable predictions should be made from it than are upheld.
If you can do all that, you're really onto something.
Vijay, your question is important and one of nearly ancient origin. Questions raised by epistemology and the philosophy of science benefit our understanding at a deep level what we as researchers are doing. One view is that we can separate scientific knowledge gains as either evolutionary or revolutionary. The evolution takes place in small laborious increments. Our schema or world view changes slowly and each finding raises new possibilities to be explored, and generates hypotheses to be tested. It is incremental and continuous evolutionary change.
On the other hand one might consider large revolutionary change where new paradigms foster discontinuous change. Major patterns of thought are shifted and whole new areas of inquiry are explored. For a very thoughtful treatise in this area see Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution.
As I reread your question, I am wondering if academics, deans, the press (professional and lay) desire and give more credence to revolutionary thought than to incremental evolutionary research. So often, it seems to me, that bigger, better, shiny and colorful ideas are valued more than good old fashioned incremental knowledge on which science is built. Does this demand for newer, faster, brighter lay a foundation for hucksterism and fraud? Both evolution and revolution are important, but I would argue that one is not necessarily better than the other. When evolutionary knowledge is repackaged for fame and fortune of those who discover or promote it, the literature may be poisoned and harm may be done to those who rely on good science. One need look no further than to the history of medicine to so-called revolutions that injure people due to incomplete understanding or outright deception. Is there an ethical mandate to do good science? Does the need for revolution come in conflict with our ethical principles?
I will be curious to read your informed view and that of others. There are many other well reasoned positions and interests to take in this discussion.
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