I want to direct the attention of the General Assembly to the following actions taken by a group of representatives of ECCOMAS in connection to the Prandtl Medal, which was to be awarded to me at the opening ceremony of the IACM-ECCOMAS Conference July 21-25 in Barcelona:
1. I was informed that I had to arrange and pay travel and accomodation myself.
2. I was not invited to the Conference Banquet and informed that the cost was not covered by ECCOMAS.
3. I was not given a fair possibility of expressing my views: No very short statement authored by me was permitted to be voiced at the award ceremony. After a long hazzle I was given a last empty slot in one of 49 parallel sessions in a room of 34 m2 accomodating at most 20 people.
4. The abstract of my talk and link to a related post on my professional blog was not put up on the conference web page, despite repeated requests by me.
5. I was met by an unfriendly uncivilized attitude in a long correspondence recorded on my blog:
3. I was not given a fair possibility of expressing my views: No very short statement authored by me was permitted to be voiced at the award ceremony. After a long hazzle I was given a last empty slot in one of 49 parallel sessions in a room of 34 m2 accomodating at most 20 people.
4. The abstract of my talk and link to a related post on my professional blog was not put up on the conference web page, despite repeated requests by me.
5. I was met by an unfriendly uncivilized attitude in a long correspondence recorded on my blog:
with related posts here, here, here and here.
As a consequence of mainly 3. I could not accept to receive the Medal.
As a consequence of mainly 3. I could not accept to receive the Medal.
I ask the General Assembly to study the details of this story, which to me has been a completely unexpected and unprecedented harrassment.
I expect the General Assembly to report back to me and in particular inform me if the reception I have met as Medalist is the normal standard of ECCOMAS.
Sincerely,
Claes Johnson
PS Letter to the Organizers asking for reimbursement of my expenses created by the Prandtl Medal Award:
To the Organizers IACM-ECCOMAS Barcelona 2014
The effect of the letter will be reported in upcoming post. Apparently, ECCOMAS has already refused to pay the hotel bill, since the cost has been drawn on my credit card. The chance that the flight ticket will reimbursed appears to be small, since my request has not even been acknowledged.
I really wonder if this is the standard of ECCOMAS, or if I am getting a special reception, because of my "outstanding and sustained contributions to CFD"? If so, it adds to my experience that the better results you may have, the more "outstanding and sustained contributions" you have created, the more opposition and suppression you will meet.
PS Letter to the Organizers asking for reimbursement of my expenses created by the Prandtl Medal Award:
To the Organizers IACM-ECCOMAS Barcelona 2014
I ask you to reimburse me for the following costs in connection to the Prandtl Medal 2014 awarded to me, which have been drawn on my personal bank account:
Hotel Rey Juan Carlos, two nights: SEK 2897
Flight Vueling EBRC7K: SEK 2211
Total SEK: 5108 (around €600)
Please send the remimbursement to Handelsbanken Strandvägen 5B, Box 14222, 104 40 Stockholm
Clearingnumber: 6124, Swift/BIC: HANDSESS
account xxxxxxxxx
Please inform me ASAP when the payment has been done, or if you for some reason are unable to make the transaction.
Sincerely,
Claes Johnson
I really wonder if this is the standard of ECCOMAS, or if I am getting a special reception, because of my "outstanding and sustained contributions to CFD"? If so, it adds to my experience that the better results you may have, the more "outstanding and sustained contributions" you have created, the more opposition and suppression you will meet.
Inlägg
Stort grattis till priset, Claes!
SvaraRaderaClaes, I respect your knowledge and integrity but I do think you should have accepted the medal and then said just few words that words that your work has disproved Prandtl's theories. That way you would have had some supporters to get a change in the Fluid dynamics hierarchy. Now those in charge will dig in their heels and there will be resistance and poor knowledge for another 10 years.
SvaraRaderaBest wishes cementafriend. (www.cementafriend.wordpress.com)
The reason I denied the Medal was that I was not allowed to express criticism of Prandtl's boundary layer theory in a reasonable way at the conference and not with one word in direct connection to the award ceremony.
SvaraRaderaI don't think politics is really your game Claes. You seem to be obsessed with a certain personality with the name Prandtl to the degree that you phrase your entire concept in the form "Prandtl was wrong". Some people might, perhaps rightfully, think that to be somewhat crass since he didn't have access to anything remotely similar to your supercomputers, to which you also make reference. Your behaviour related to the fact that his name is attached to the prize makes you wonder if you were instead awarded the "Stalin prize" or something similar. I don't think people will see anything particularly unreasonable in the letters from the organizers, after all, they awarded you the prize in the first place. I sincerely think that you would be much better off if you changed your strategy.
SvaraRaderaAnders: if you study the case you will come to another conclusion.
SvaraRaderaThe famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” It is a great privilege to have been awarded the Prandtl Medal, since he is widely considered to be the Father of Modern Fluid Mechanics.
SvaraRaderaThe development of moderns computers, however, has enabled me, together with Johan Hoffman, to reach beyond Prandtl’s boundary layer theory. Our evidence consists of computational solutions of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations as the basic model for slightly viscous turbulent flow, combined with slip boundary condition as a model of observed small skin friction, which does not generate any no-slip boundary layers but nevertheless agree with observation of separation, drag and lift for a wide range of problems.
Our work, which might realize one of the dreams of Leonhard Euler, opens a wide range of new possibilities for many users of CFD. I will present some of these possibilities in the session Advanced Methods in CFD I following this award ceremony.
What do you think?
I do not see your point: these are essentially my words, which were not allowed to be expressed in direct connection to the award ceremony.
SvaraRaderaI see the point. It avoids expressions like "the spell of Prandtl", which I presume mean "förbannelse" in swedish. You give them obvious points of attack that are not necessary.
SvaraRaderaTo suppress open scientific discussion is against the basic principle of science. If this principle is not violated then it is impossible to use the argument that a certain
SvaraRaderastatement can be suppressed because of its form or wording.
Symptomatic for your case seems to be that you don't think strategically, but instead (mis)interpret every gesture as an excuse for getting offended. The latter sometimes reaches silly proportions on this blog. Just consider the following advice:
SvaraRaderaTry a little bit more finesse and street smart attitude. See where that leads you.
first of all let me congratulate you for your award.
SvaraRaderain my opinion ECCOMAS showed a truly open and scientific-based approach giving you the Prandtl medal in recognition of your work.
you showed instead a very narrow-minded approach, trying to create a scientific dispute where there was none.
you created, all by yourself, a new situation where you can act as a victim, when in fact there was no intention of hurting you by the committee.
i think it is a pity that you waste your talent in infantile disputes.
To go with the crowd is easy. To have an independent thought is more interesting to me and maybe more constructive to science.
SvaraRadera