Weird wp:paragraph “placeholder” inserted in my post Problems with the ANR Bigben project

I just noticed that my post Problems with the ANR Bigben project contained a weird first paragraph, which I have not written:

The insertion code was: “wp:paragraph {“placeholder”:”What are your feelings about eating meat?”}”

What is that?

Thesis proposal about SBEN is just about BEN

Dishonest bibliography and lie by omission in this thesis proposal about SBEN.

See more about the context of this in Problems with the ANR Bigben project and Answer from ANR concerning the ANR Bigben project.

They write: “the Symplectic Brezis-Ekeland-Nayroles (SBEN in short) variational principle which has been developed by our team in LamCube [1,2,3]”

… and when you look at the bibliography you find just 3 (weak IMO, but recent) numerical applications of BEN, ie the Brezis-Ekeland-Nayroles principle. Give to the classics the due respect:

H. Brezis and I. Ekeland, Un principe variationnel associe a certaines equations paraboliques. I. Le cas independant du temps, II. Le cas dependant du temps. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Serie A-B, 282, 971-974, and 1197-1198, 1976.

B. Nayroles, Deux theoremes de minimum pour certains systemes dissipatifs, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Serie A-B, 282, A1035-A1038, 1976$.

No wonder, the so called SBEN principle was introduced in arXiv:1408.3102, based on the much older hamiltonian inclusions with convex dissipation arXiv:0810.1419 . The observation which justifies the name SBEN is just that in elastoplasticity, if we ignore the dynamical terms, then we can deduce BEN from SBEN.

There is no SBEN in quasistatic elastoplasticity, is just BEN…

For the latest theoretical treatment of the hamiltonian with dissipation formulation see Dissipation and the information content of the deviation from hamiltonian dynamics arXiv:2304.14158.

But… except for lack of attribution, again, I recall Woody Guthrie copyright (always mentioned by Cory Doctorow in his online versions of his novels):

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

https://www.abg.asso.fr/en/candidatOffres/show/id_offre/113549/job/a-non-incremental-numerical-method-for-non-associated-elastoplasticity-by-the-the-bipotential-and-sben-principle

Dissipation and the information content of the deviation from hamiltonian dynamics

This is arXiv:2304.14158v1 [math-ph] abstract: We explain a dissipative version of hamiltonian mechanics, based on the information content of the deviation from hamiltonian dynamics. From this formulation we deduce minimal dissipation principles, dynamical inclusions, or constrained evolution with hamiltonian drift reformulations. Among applications we recover a dynamics generalization of Mielke et al quasistatic rate-independent processes.
This article gives a clear and unitary presentation of the theory of hamiltonian inclusions with convex dissipation or symplectic Brezis-Ekeland-Nayroles principle, presented under various conventions first in arXiv:0810.1419, then in arXiv:1408.3102 and, for the appearance of bipotentials in relation to the symplectic duality, in arXiv:1902.04598v1.

Answer from ANR concerning the ANR Bigben project

For context see Problems with the ANR Bigben project.

The presidency of the french Agence Nationale de la Recherche kindly answered to my demand of reexamination of the awarded ANR Bigben project. [added: … after several previous interesting mail exchanges with higher and higher ANR representatives; one argument impressed me a lot, perhaps it deserves a full discussion because after all we want Open Science to win.]

Here are the two parts of the answer: avis (pdf) and letter (pdf).

Here is my reply to ANR answer (links added and [text added between brackets here]):

Thank you for the precise response and for the time spent by ANR concerning this subject. For the scientific part there is an article in preparation.

Here are some short remarks.

1. There are no “generalized bipotentials”. The name is invented by the project leader to fit with his competences. The source of the theoretical foundation which gives the name to the project is arXiv:1902.04598, [On the information content of the difference from hamiltonian evolution] where in proposition 1.3 is explained the appearance of what the project leader now calls “generalized bipotentials”. This is not referenced in the project.
2. For the experts: a bipotential is always relative to the duality chosen. What matters is the difference between the bipotential and the duality. Change the duality and you obtain a change of bipotential, by a substraction of the old duality and an addition of the new duality. Is this a theoretical advance towards “generalized bipotentials”?
3. The subject of my hamiltonian inclusions is old (2008) [Hamiltonian inclusions with convex dissipation]. It was turned into “symplectic BEN” during a collaboration with the project leader, where the connection with Brezis-Ekeland and Nayroles principles was made, by neglecting the inertial terms. But the reduction of hamiltonian inclusions, or SBEN if you like, to BEN is misleading. Back in 2014, when Djimedo Kondo, member of the bigben team, was introduced to the subject, [slides of d’Alembert seminary from 2014], [figshare], he immediately remarked that the reduction of SBEN to BEN has problems. Indeed, what the leader de Saxce claims is that all reduces to the minimization of a cost functional over all evolution curves. But the cost, as easily remarked by Kondo, is infinite for most of the trajectories, unless one already satisfies the dynamic equations. By neglecting the inertial terms, one does not solve the problem, because the same kind of infinities force to consider the satisfiability of the trajectory (as in contact or some plasticity or damage problems). Even since 2014 it was clear that the “SBEN is BEN” idea of de Saxce, cannot work in practice, except for some trivial examples. In this project the leader de Saxce wants to pursue the same. I claim that other ideas are needed (some of them I have, but am I willing to make the public again, without attribution?).
4. I am of course willing to see my work being developed and moreover enhanced by meaningful collaboration. It does not seem the case until now. There is also the ethical aspect which I refrained to mention because the scientific case is almost enough. That is why I refused the “visio” meetings recently, because previous ones, where I protested against “SBEN is BEN” or where I was assured about the details of collaboration, amounted to nothing. I am now accused, in messages leaked by inadvertence by de Saxce, to have strange financial demands, when in reality I asked for a schedule and details just like the other members of the project. This is a lack of collegiality which I take very seriously.
5. Therefore, I take as very positive the interest into hamiltonian inclusion, or SBEN, or by any other name. It is also positive that some work on arXiv (not any work, only the useful one) is appropriated, thus recognizing the value.
6. I take as negative the lack of attribution. I challenged my career on these Open Science ideas, do I need to see my work being used without proper attribution? But I admit though that from the point of view of ANR, or any other management organization, it would be risky to accept as valuable any arXiv, say, “preprint” (and probably it would mean the death of arXiv itself, due to low quality submissions). But in this case, clearly this work is valuable.

With best regards to all the members of this discussion,

Marius Buliga

_____

After the response, a final comment: it would be nice if the reputed ANR takes a step towards acknowledging more Open Science, just like more than 100 years ago the french society accepted impressionism in art.

The history of that art movement is an inspiration since a long time, see Boring mathematics, artistes pompiers and impressionists.

Problems with the ANR Bigben project

Due to unethical behavior of de Saxce, the principal investigator of the project Bigben, recently funded by the french Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), I asked the ANR for a reevaluation of the project and a public response.

My work on hamiltonian inclusions, aka SBEN, is central and the main novelty of this project. After winning the ANR competition, the principal investigator misrepresented my work and engaged in unethical behavior. I keep the correspondence which proves this, for the interested colleagues, although I would rather hope that ANR takes the steps to self regulate in this matter.

I shall update with the ANR response or reaction, if any.

UPDATE: ANR kindly answered, see this post, but not exactly to my questions, so I replied.

As concerns the scientific part, a detailed explanation will be available. I am sad that a beautiful principle of dissipation as minimal disclosed information is dumbed down to an old idea. The Brezis-Ekeland-Nayroles (BEN) principle in quasistatic plasticity is just a particular example of my general theory (and the only new contribution of de Saxce) and sadly, not the feasible way to exploit the hamiltonian inclusions, except in the most trivial situations.

To transform the hamiltonian inclusions into symplectic BEN then into generalized bipotentials(BIG) BEN is only a game where by slight name changes de Saxce tries to appropriate my ideas. There is no scientific content in these name changes or particular examples.

Even the names are misleading, for example there are no generalized bipotentials, they are the same ones with respect to the symplectic duality (my work, not de Saxce’s). The point is not about bipotentials!

One needs to show how this principle can be used for simulations and for this there exist other, new ways.

Here you can see slides from 2014 and all the actors of the present project.

For my work on this subject see:

[1] M. Buliga, Hamiltonian inclusions with convex dissipation with a view towards applications, Mathematics and its Applications 1, 2 (2009), 228-251, arXiv:0810.1419

[2] M. Buliga, G. de Saxce, A symplectic Brezis-Ekeland-Nayroles principle, Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids 22, 6, (2017), arXiv:1408.3102

[3] M. Buliga, A stochastic version and a Liouville theorem for hamiltonian inclusions with convex dissipation (2018), arXiv:1807.10480

[4] M. Buliga, On the information content of the difference from hamiltonian evolution (2019), arXiv:1902.04598