On 2016 Apr 09, Lydia Maniatis commented:

The first sentence of the abstract reads: "Auditory noise is a sound, a random variation in air pressure." A sound is not random variation in air pressure. It's probably more appropriate to define noise in terms of the abilities of the system that is analysing the stimulation, rather than as a characteristic of the stimulus.

The same may be said when we turn to vision, where we're told that: "“Noise” in perception experiments generally [generally?] means unpredictable variation in some aspect of the stimulus." Can we really make a distinction between "noise" and "signal" on the basis of predictability? When I turn on the TV and I don't know what I'll see, does that make what I see "noise"? There really needs to be a clarification.

Having read more of this literature since my last comment, it's become obvious that basic terms and concepts have been fudged for too long, producing a literature without substance (but full of complexity and contradiction).

On 2015 Dec 10, Lydia Maniatis commented:

This seems rather an odd choice of theme for a "Research Topic" in that it inspired a collection of papers with no conceptual coherence, out of many others that could have been selected on the basis of a common technique. It is somewhat like saying we'll put together an issue of physics papers that all used spectrometers. It's not really a "topic" unless you're specifically focussing on, e.g., pros and cons of the method.

The editors summary expresses the situation well: "In sum, this Research Topic issue shows several ways to use diverse kinds of noise to probe visual processing." As discussed in their exposition, noise has been historically used in multifarious ways for multifarious purposes.

I think the emphasis on technique rather than on theoretical problems is symptomatic of the conceptual impoverishment of the field. The use of the term "probe" has become common in this field, at least, indicating that a study is an exercise in a-theoretical data collection, rather than a methodic attempt to answer a question.

I would also add that noise as a technique to probe normal perception in normal conditions should be employed with caution, since it does not characterise normal scenes, but rather places unusual stress on the system which may respond in unusual ways.

Predictably, the results of the articles described seem undigested and of unclear value: E.g. "Hall et al. (2014) find that adding white noise increased the center spatial frequency of the letter-identification channel for large but not small letters;" (so...? how large is large...?) "Gold (2014) use pixel noise to investigate the visual information used by the observer during a size-contrast illusion. By correlating the observers頣lassification decision with each pixel of the noise stimuli, they find that the spatial region used to estimate the size of the target is influenced by the size of surrounding irrelevant elements" (or your theoretical definition of "irrelevant" needs adjustment).

If the goal of this issue was to show that you can make noise and get published, then it's a big success.

On 2015 Dec 10, Lydia Maniatis commented:

This seems rather an odd choice of theme for a "Research Topic" in that it inspired a collection of papers with no conceptual coherence, out of many others that could have been selected on the basis of a common technique. It is somewhat like saying we'll put together an issue of physics papers that all used spectrometers. It's not really a "topic" unless you're specifically focussing on, e.g., pros and cons of the method.

The editors summary expresses the situation well: "In sum, this Research Topic issue shows several ways to use diverse kinds of noise to probe visual processing." As discussed in their exposition, noise has been historically used in multifarious ways for multifarious purposes.

I think the emphasis on technique rather than on theoretical problems is symptomatic of the conceptual impoverishment of the field. The use of the term "probe" has become common in this field, at least, indicating that a study is an exercise in a-theoretical data collection, rather than a methodic attempt to answer a question.

I would also add that noise as a technique to probe normal perception in normal conditions should be employed with caution, since it does not characterise normal scenes, but rather places unusual stress on the system which may respond in unusual ways.

Predictably, the results of the articles described seem undigested and of unclear value: E.g. "Hall et al. (2014) find that adding white noise increased the center spatial frequency of the letter-identification channel for large but not small letters;" (so...? how large is large...?) "Gold (2014) use pixel noise to investigate the visual information used by the observer during a size-contrast illusion. By correlating the observers頣lassification decision with each pixel of the noise stimuli, they find that the spatial region used to estimate the size of the target is influenced by the size of surrounding irrelevant elements" (or your theoretical definition of "irrelevant" needs adjustment).

If the goal of this issue was to show that you can make noise and get published, then it's a big success.

On 2016 Apr 09, Lydia Maniatis commented:

The first sentence of the abstract reads: "Auditory noise is a sound, a random variation in air pressure." A sound is not random variation in air pressure. It's probably more appropriate to define noise in terms of the abilities of the system that is analysing the stimulation, rather than as a characteristic of the stimulus.

The same may be said when we turn to vision, where we're told that: "“Noise” in perception experiments generally [generally?] means unpredictable variation in some aspect of the stimulus." Can we really make a distinction between "noise" and "signal" on the basis of predictability? When I turn on the TV and I don't know what I'll see, does that make what I see "noise"? There really needs to be a clarification.

Having read more of this literature since my last comment, it's become obvious that basic terms and concepts have been fudged for too long, producing a literature without substance (but full of complexity and contradiction).