Actively recruiting

Scientific and Ethics Committee: Bioethicist or Human-Subjects Protection Specialist

Credentialed

An inaugural seat on the Scientific and Ethics Committee. Reviews consent, voluntariness, vulnerable populations, recruitment fairness, participant burden, privacy, and publication ethics. This is one of seven named seats on the Scientific and Ethics Committee, recruited individually so that candidates can see exactly which seat they are applying for and what it requires.

An independent oversight seat. Service may initially be voluntary while Herbal Trials raises startup funding. The organization intends to build the capacity to support qualified professionals responsibly as operations grow. Any compensation or reimbursement must be properly approved, documented, reasonable, and administered under the conflict-of-interest procedures. Independence comes from authority, disclosure, recusal, and documented procedure, not from going unpaid.

Seat 4 of 7. Open. This is a named seat on a constituted body, not a general posting. Herbal Trials is recruiting each of the seven inaugural seats separately so you can see exactly which seat you would hold and what it is accountable for. See the full seven-seat architecture.

How this seat counts toward Committee composition

These are roster-level requirements satisfied across the whole Committee, not separate seats. They are why candidates are assessed against the resulting Committee rather than in isolation.

Primarily scientific: No
Primarily non-scientific: Determined from the appointee's primary professional background
Wholly unaffiliated: No

How classification is determined. Whether this member satisfies the primarily non-scientific requirement is determined from the appointee's own primary professional background, not from the seat. The classification is documented at appointment.

Why this seat is indispensable. This seat is indispensable even though an external IRB will still review human-subject research.

Required

Formal bioethics training, IRB experience, research-compliance experience, or equivalent

Preferred

Strengthens an application. Not disqualifying if absent.

Experience with vulnerable-population protocols
Consent-document drafting or review
Publication-ethics and authorship-dispute experience

What this seat reviews

Consent: what a participant would actually understand, not what the form says
Voluntariness and the absence of coercion or undue influence
Vulnerable populations and whether additional protections are warranted
Recruitment fairness and who bears the burden of the research
Participant burden against participant benefit
Privacy and the handling of participant data
Publication ethics, authorship, and honest reporting

Expected workload

Present on every human-subject protocol and on consent-document revisions.

Compensation: Volunteer (uncompensated appointment)
Participant-facing: No
Credential required: Yes
Training before activation: Yes
Conflict review: Full disclosure & review required before appointment
Seat status: Open
Classification: May count as non-scientific
Term: Three years. Initial terms are staggered so the whole Committee does not turn over at once. Proposed charter term, subject to Board adoption.
Estimated future need: Recruiting now: required before the first study can open

Important boundaries

The Committee is not yet seated. No human-subject or animal-subject research commences until the Board confirms that all mechanisms required by the Framework are operational (§13.2). Before such research begins the Board must either seat this Committee or retain an external IRB, IACUC, or other independent ethics body qualified under applicable law to perform its functions (§3.1). Herbal Trials is seating the Committee.
This Committee is an institutional scientific-governance and pre-review body. It does not replace an Institutional Review Board. No human-subject study may open solely on the Committee's review; applicable studies must also receive approval from an appropriately constituted independent IRB.
Members review protocol design, botanical standards, manuscripts, and evidence grading. They do not conduct the research they review.
The Committee has independent authority to approve, require modifications in, disapprove, suspend, or terminate any research activity within its jurisdiction. No officer, director, funder, or other person shall override a determination of the Committee except through a documented appeal to a second independent ethics committee (Framework §3.4).
No member may participate in the initial or continuing review of a project in which the member has a conflicting interest, except to provide factual information. Members sign annual conflict-of-interest disclosures (Framework §3.3).
Appointment is by the Board to a specifically identified seat, after qualification, conflict, interview, and composition review. Support for herbal medicine or for the organization's mission is not a qualification.

What your application includes

Profile & contact
Governance & independence
Conflict-of-interest disclosure
Document uploads

What to have ready

A CV or résumé is part of every profile. For this role, also have:

Independence & conflict-of-interest attestation
Statement of interest
Publications, committee service, or oversight experience

What we’ll ask you

How you run the day-to-day of a study, and how you protect the people in it. Everyone also answers a few shared questions on research integrity and why this work. You answer these in your private portal after verifying your email. Your answers are stored with your private application and may be reviewed by authorized personnel when the role becomes active. They are never scored or rejected solely by an automated system.

Walk us through how you'd run an informed-consent conversation from greeting to signature, including how you'd handle a participant who seems unsure.
The day before a monitoring visit, a source document and the EDC don't match. What do you do?
How do you keep a demanding recruitment or visit schedule without ever pressuring or over-promising to a participant?
Describe your coordinator experience — study types, systems (EDC/CTMS), consent and source documentation — and what you handled independently. (optional)
Participant safety and honest data sometimes conflict with hitting enrollment targets. How do you hold that line? (optional)

Asked specifically for this seat

Describe a consent document you found inadequate, and what you changed.
How do you weigh participant burden against the value of the knowledge sought?
Whether your background is primarily scientific or non-scientific, and why you consider it so.

Never upload Social Security numbers, tax or bank details, or patient records. Herbal Trials does not sell supplements, make efficacy claims, or provide medical advice, and does not endorse any substance. Candidate substances remain unverified until studied.

More in Committee

Scientific and Ethics Committee: General Interest or Nomination Scientific and Ethics Committee: Clinical-Trial Methodologist Scientific and Ethics Committee: Botanical and Pharmacognosy Scientist Scientific and Ethics Committee: Biostatistician Scientific and Ethics Committee: Toxicology and Safety Specialist