# MANTRA: a Framework for Multi-stage Adaptive Noise TReAtment During Training

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04319 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04319/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [CodeBERT: A Pre-Trained Model for Programming and Natural Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08155/) (2020)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [DivideMix: Learning with Noisy Labels as Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07394/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Large Language Models for Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00515/) (2024)
- [CodeSearchNet Challenge: Evaluating the State of Semantic Code Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09436/) (2019)
- [GraphCodeBERT: Pre-training Code Representations with Data Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.08366/) (2020)
- [StarCoder 2 and The Stack v2: The Next Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19173/) (2024)
- [Early-Learning Regularization Prevents Memorization of Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00151/) (2020)
- [Confident Learning: Estimating Uncertainty in Dataset Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00068/) (2019)
- [Peer Loss Functions: Learning from Noisy Labels without Knowing Noise Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03231/) (2019)
- [Can LLMs Replace Human Evaluators? An Empirical Study of LLM-as-a-Judge in Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06193/) (2025)
- [Detecting Corrupted Labels Without Training a Model to Predict](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06283/) (2021)
- [Multilingual training for Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02043/) (2021)
- [An Empirical Comparison of Pre-Trained Models of Source Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04026/) (2023)
- [RobustFT: Robust Supervised Fine-tuning for Large Language Models under Noisy Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14922/) (2024)
- [Learning with Noisy Labels by Efficient Transition Matrix Estimation to Combat Label Miscorrection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14932/) (2021)
- [Automatic Code Summarization: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04352/) (2019)
- [On the Effectiveness of LLM-as-a-judge for Code Generation and Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16587/) (2025)
- [Hide and Seek in Noise Labels: Noise-Robust Collaborative Active Learning with LLM-Powered Assistance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02901/) (2025)
- [SelfMix: Robust Learning Against Textual Label Noise with Self-Mixup Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04525/) (2022)
- [Noisy Label Learning for Security Defects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04468/) (2022)
- [Towards Understanding the Impact of Data Bugs on Deep Learning Models in Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12137/) (2024)
- [Towards Using Data-Influence Methods to Detect Noisy Samples in Source Code Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13022/) (2022)
- [Learning with Noisy Labels: Interconnection of Two Expectation-Maximizations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04390/) (2024)
- [Calibrating Pre-trained Language Classifiers on LLM-generated Noisy Labels via Iterative Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19675/) (2025)
- [Logistic-Normal Likelihoods for Heteroscedastic Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02849/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The reliable application of deep learning models to software engineering tasks hinges on high-quality training data. Yet, large-scale repositories inevitably introduce noisy or mislabeled examples that degrade both accuracy and robustness. While Noise Label Learning (NLL) has been extensively studied in other fields, there are a few works that investigate NLL in Software Engineering (SE) and Large Language Models (LLMs) for SE tasks. In this work, we propose MANTRA, a Multi-stage Adaptive Noise TReAtment framework that embeds noise diagnosis and mitigation directly into the fine-tuning process of code-Pretrained Language Models (PTM) and code-LLMs. We first investigate the effect of noise at varying levels on convergence and loss trajectories of the models. Then we apply an adaptive dropout strategy guided by per-sample loss dynamics and Gaussian Mixture Model clustering to exclude persistently noisy points while preserving clean data. Applying to code summarization and commit intent classification, our experiments reveal that some LLMs are more sensitive to noise than others. However, with MANTRA, the performance of all models in both tasks is improved. MANTRA enables researchers and practitioners to reduce the impact of errors introduced by the dataset in training, saves time in data cleaning and processing, while maximizing the effect of fine-tuning.