Non-native English writing: an underestimated problem?

Recently my husband, who works at a senior level in engineering science, grumbled about the amount of time he was having to put into reviewing research articles. “Doing the job of the supervisors” was how he put it. Articles are submitted that are nowhere near a “final” form. He implied that some supervisors, although clearly native speakers themselves, may not have taken the trouble to even look at the papers before allowing them to be sent in, let alone to check them through. And it is hard work for reviewers to understand the actual message and to evaluate and suggest effective improvements on the basis of a badly written text, particularly when the research may not even be directly in their own field. My husband admitted to being very tempted, on occasions, to resort to sarcasm to relieve the frustration.