There seems to be an increasing number of MSc or PhD studies by young students with little tunnelling or TBM experience. They compare numerous established prognosis methods, and regrettably make unintended mistakes, coming up with order-of-magnitude errors on AR and PR, maybe far beyond world records or practical possibilities. Since a consistent 5 to 6m/hr PR will exceed most conveyor capacities, why is there no reaction (from somewhere along the chain of responsibility) when the students find 20 to 30m/hr (or even larger) in their estimates? Who is responsible? Student, professor (likely a co-author), or journal reviewers and editors? A point of some importance is that the young students are likely reviewing established empirical methods now also used by others, and developed when those concerned had considerable TBM experience, so knew very well if they (the originators) were in any way justified in publishing in the first place. It should be clear that originator's reputations as perhaps reliable consultants are being ignored by the students and professors who are convinced of the validity of their studies. How can we eliminate these unfortunate publications before their gross PR and AR calculation errors are widely spread? Is there no self-doubt anymore, just youthful over-confidence, and regrettably sleeping reviewers without necessary experience.?
Thanks for the comprehensive answers that I tend to agree with but without your wider experience from other fields too. We have to hope that the '99% noise' possibility is less than this - otherwise a sad future for those aiming for 'the 1%'. Hope you were exaggerating a bit - but a clear message to all. One solution: get the professors out into the practicing world, at least for stipulated periods that should differ from paper/book producing sabbaticals? Six months in industry every three or five years? 50% university salary/50% industry in these periods to stimulate industrial uptake and the personal need for this employment? Maybe such is happening in some places. The adjunct prof positions of professionals at intervals (three in my case) is also useful for all - hopefully. Should it be more often there too?
The academic environment is full of papers just saying bla bla bla, nothing more. However, it is not hard to differentiate a real research paper from the fake one. This is just because in some countries, publishing is nearly the only criterion for getting a new academic position. This leads to the production of an extreme amount of irrelevant and unnecessary data and publications that will be never used and (in case of a publication) will be lastly read (I am not sure actually) by the reviewers of the paper.
Editors have the biggest responsibility to select the correct reviewers who can understand what is going on in the paper. When the reviewer is not competent, it mostly leads to two extreme conditions: First, the rejection of a high-quality paper or acceptance of a bad quality paper because the reviewer has no clue about the content. I, personally, have sometimes such reviewer requests on manuscripts that have subjects I have not published a single paper. Sometimes it might be the case that I have never read a paper on that subject. Selecting the correct reviewer may solve, of course to some extent, the issue. This can be claimed for mid to high-quality journals of course. For other ones, there is nothing to do.
About the situation in Germany: It is not necessary to have industrial experience for a professorship. It might be just a choice. The regulations may differ from one State to another State but as far as I know, one must either finish habilitation (like a second Ph.D.) or have the industrial experience to become a full professor. In some cases, the person can fulfill this condition with a good publication record.
The number of sub-standard articles continues to surprise. Now a prominent international oil company and a normally well-respected university (and multiple authors) coming with the assumption that the BB-model is just based on granite. (Actually it was based on natural joints from more than a dozen rock types). Then erroneous application of BB and remarkable multiple JRC and JCS values from just ONE SMALL DRILLING-INDUCED FRACTURE in mudstone with aperture of a few microns, so implied critique that the BB criterion does not work. Who reviewed this 'student' article? Have they never heard of the BB criterion - a frequent international alternative to Mohr-Coulomb, adopted in several commercial codes. Would this happen if BB was 'only granite'?
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