[visionlist] Highly cited publications on vision in which authors were also subjects?

Wed May 27 13:47:01 -04 2020

As Avnei notes we almost always use authors as subjects in our fMRI 
vision papers, and AFAIK most of the other fMRI vision labs do the same. 
For example:

Kay, K. N., Naselaris, T., Prenger, R. J., & Gallant, J. L. (2008). 
Identifying natural images from human brain activity. Nature, 452(7185), 
352-355.
Nishimoto, S., Vu, A. T., Naselaris, T., Benjamini, Y., Yu, B., & 
Gallant, J. L. (2011). Reconstructing visual experiences from brain 
activity evoked by natural movies. Current Biology, 21(19), 1641-1646.

The advantage of using authors as subjects is that they are attentive 
and disciplined, so they produce good behavioral and fMRI data.

The disadvantages are that there is the potential for coercion (this is 
usually the main concern of the human subjects committee) and that the 
data could potentially be biased.

I have dealt with the first concern by arguing [1] that all those who 
are considering joining the lab are fully informed beforehand of the 
common in-lab practice that experimenters are subjects, [2] that being 
accepted into the lab is not contingent on being a subject (though if 
someone were to opt-out their colleagues might expect them to repay the 
sweat equity in some other form of lab contribution), and [3] that it is 
unreasonable to expect an experimenter to ask someone else to 
participate in an experiment that they wouldn't be willing to do in 
themselves.

I have dealt with the second concern by always performing data analysis 
at the individual subject level in order to show consistency between 
subjects.

Experimenters serving as subjects in their own experiments has a long 
and noble history in psychophysics. If it was good enough for Hermann 
von Helmholtz its good enough for me! :^D

Jack

On 5/27/20 9:44 AM, Ghuman, Avniel wrote:
> Both of the subjects in this paper were authors:
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06713#Sec3
> 
> Citations: 1093
> 
> It has generally been true of a lot of Jack Gallant's fMRI papers that 
> the authors were subjects.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Avniel
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* visionlist <visionlist-bounces at visionscience.com> on behalf of 
> Dennis M. LEVI <dlevi at berkeley.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 27, 2020 9:33 AM
> *To:* visionlist at visionscience.com <visionlist at visionscience.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [visionlist] Highly cited publications on vision in which 
> authors were also subjects?
> And here are a couple more:
> 
> Citations: 765
> Vernier acuity, crowding and cortical magnification
> DM Levi, SA Klein, AP Aitsebaomo
> Vision research 25 (7), 963-977
> 
> Citations: 587
> The Two-Dimensional Shape of Spattal Interaction Zones in the Parafovea
> A TOET, DM LEVI
> Vision Res 32 (7), 1349-1357.1992
> 
> 
>> On May 27, 2020, at 8:32 AM, Andrew Watson <abwatson at me.com 
>> <mailto:abwatson at me.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Gabriel,
>>
>> A few papers in which the author was guilty of serving as subject.
>>
>>
>> citations: 193
>> Watson, A. B. (1982). Summation of grating patches indicates many 
>> types of detector at one retinal location. Vision Res, 22, 17-25.
>>
>> 218
>> Watson, A. B., & Nachmias, J. (1977). Patterns of temporal interaction 
>> in the detection of gratings. Vision Res, 17, 893-902.
>>
>> 220
>> Watson, A. B., Borthwick, R., & Taylor, M. (1997). Image quality and 
>> entropy masking. SPIE Proceedings, 3016, 2-12.
>>
>> 274
>> Watson, A. B., Ahumada, A. J., Jr., & Farrell, J. (1986). Window of 
>> visibility: psychophysical theory of fidelity in time-sampled visual 
>> motion displays. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 3(3), 
>> 300-307, 
>> http://www.opticsinfobase.org/viewmedia.cfm?uri=josaa-3-3-300&seq=0.
>>
>> 300
>> Watson, A. B., & Ahumada, J. A. J. (2005). A standard model for foveal 
>> detection of spatial contrast. Journal of Vision, 5(9), 6-6, 
>> http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/5.9.6.
>>
>> 339
>> Watson, A. B., Barlow, H. B., & Robson, J. G. (1983). What does the 
>> eye see best? Nature, 302(5907), 419-422.
>>
>> 432
>> Watson, A. B., & Robson, J. G. (1981). Discrimination at threshold: 
>> labelled detectors in human vision. Vision Res, 21, 1115-1122.
>>
>> 833
>> Watson, A. B., Yang, G. Y., Solomon, J. A., & Villasenor, J. (1997). 
>> Visibility of wavelet quantization noise. IEEE Transactions on Image 
>> Processing, 6(8), 1164-1175.
>>
>>
>> *Andrew Watson
>> *Chief Vision Scientist
>> Apple
>>
>>> On May 27, 2020, at 6:51 AM, Gabriel Diaz 
>>> <gabriel.jacob.diaz at gmail.com <mailto:gabriel.jacob.diaz at gmail.com>> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear vision community,
>>>
>>> In response to a recent proposal to my IRB, I have received a request 
>>> to provide examples of manuscripts in which the PI is also the 
>>> subject in the manuscript.  I am hoping that some of you may be able 
>>> to help me track some down. The more impactful the better, whether 
>>> that be indicated by citation count, recognition of the publication 
>>> venue, or any other metric, as long as it will be evident to a 
>>> non-expert.
>>>
>>> Extra points if the study involves some element of motor behavior / 
>>> perception & action.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> - gD
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> visionlist mailing list
>>> visionlist at visionscience.com <mailto:visionlist at visionscience.com>
>>> http://visionscience.com/mailman/listinfo/visionlist_visionscience.com
>>
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> 
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