Scientific principles guide future research and solidify a field's unique scholarly identity within the marketplace of ideas. An argument is made that the field of communication has achieved the necessary foundations to establish scientific principles but has yet to embrace this undertaking as a collective goal. As an initial foray into the process of identifying and evaluating scientific principles of communication, we propose several evaluation criteria which can be applied in the rendering of candidate principles. Then, the criteria are applied in the context of the proposition that 'the most likely “effect” of communication is further communication,' referred to as The Chaffee Principle. Findings from a content analysis (N = 2,040) and a meta-analysis (k = 143), offer an initial assessment of The Chaffee Principle, aiming to spark a collective effort toward elucidating scientific principles of communication that can guide and anchor the next stage of knowledge generation.