Was the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine awarded for a Kuhnian paradigm shift? An author co-citation analysis perspective

Stem cell research has been a fast growing, highly successful, and at the same time highly controversial field in recent years. Using a highly optimized author co-citation analysis methodology to study the intellectual structure of this field over the time period 2004–2009, we find that the induced pluripotent stem cell breakthrough that earned Shinya Yamanaka the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine did indeed quickly redefine its entire research field, and thus might truly qualify as a “paradigm shift” in Kuhn’s sense