University Demands Publication of Expert Reports

The University of Freiburg notes with regret and disbelief that its negotiations with the sports scientist Dr. Andreas Singler, former member of the "Freiburg Sports Medicine Evaluation Commission" ("Evaluierungskommission Freiburger Sportmedizin"), concerning the publication of two further expert reports by the university have been terminated without an agreement. According to his own account, Singler has completed the following expert reports: "Joseph Keul: Scientific Culture, Doping, and Research on Pharmacological Performance Enhancement" and "Armin Klümper and the Doping Problem in the Federal Republic of Germany: Structural Conditions for Illegitimate Manipulations, Political Support, and Institutional Failure." However, Singler is only prepared to submit these reports to the university if the university pays him a fee of almost €100,000. The university categorically refuses to comply with this excessive demand, as there are no legal grounds for it.

Andreas Singler wrote expert reports in his capacity as a member of the "Freiburg Sports Medicine Evaluation Commission." In 2012, the university arranged with the Evaluation Commission, at the request of its then chair Prof. Dr. Letizia Paoli, that every author would receive a fee of €5000 for each completed report. Trusting that the reports would be completed and submitted when ready for publication, the university has already transferred the fee for the reports to Singler. Furthermore, the university has paid Singler an additional fee of €8000 without being obliged to do so and has offered him an additional €12,000 as a concession for revisions made necessary by the mandatory external legal review of the expert reports on Joseph Keul and Armin Klümper and as a means of ensuring their speedy publication.

However, Singler has also demanded further high fees for work on the expert reports he performed as part of his former duties as assistant to the chair of the commission. These demands are devoid of any legal basis. Singler performed these duties of his own free will as a freelance collaborator and received a monthly fee for them. The freelance contract in question was canceled at the request of the commission's chair. As of 1 August 2015, Singler is no longer the assistant to the chair of the commission and thus has no right to receive further fees. He wrote the expert reports in his capacity as a voluntary member of the Evaluation Commission, not as the assistant to the commission's chair.

Singler assumed his duties as a member of the commission and as the assistant to the commission's chair on clear conditions and agreed to these conditions. The university fulfilled all relevant obligations and even offered Dr. Singler the aforementioned voluntary special fee as an additional expense allowance on top of the arranged fees for writing the reports. Now that Singler has also refused this last offer from the university, the university's efforts to reach an agreement have unfortunately failed.

On account of his former function as a member of the commission, Singler is bound to submit the expert reports he has written in publishable form. Rector Schiewer has reminded him repeatedly that the public has a right to be informed of the results of the expert reports on Keul and Klümper. A disclosure of the reports to individual journalists, as announced in Singler's press release of 14 March 2017, does not fulfill the public's right to information. The rector thus asks Singler once again to submit the two expert reports to the university immediately. The university reserves the right to consider all legal options at its disposal to secure publication of the reports.