I was at the NBER SI this past week and saw a lot of papers! I can't say that I saw any bad papers (this is the NBER after all), but I did find myself thinking about what makes a paper amazing vs. just really good. I guess the answer is that amazing papers answer important questions in clever and credible ways. Most papers don't do all three but scoring high on even one of these can get you pretty far. I would also add that presenting well makes a big difference.
Anyway, I thought this would be a good time for me to show you this blog post on why research fails. I agree with all three of her points. Pay particular attention to the part at the end explaining when research does not fail (even though it might feel that way).
Addendum: Someone isn't so happy with the state of research in the sociology of education field. I'm not so sure how this compares to the state of research within economics, but I can say that I have had similar thoughts when refereeing papers. It breaks my heart to have to recommend rejecting papers that have potentially good ideas hidden deep within them. That said, there is also the danger of spending months and months to write one footnote that nobody really cares about. Always tricky to figure out when to let go of a paper....I struggle with this.
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