Now this is a riot! I reran my test above, this time parenting everything to an independent sphere (not visible) and scaling the sphere to 1000%. I moved the camera back to reframe the shot and rendered. The artifacts near the intersection of the small transparent sphere and checkered sphere are still there but not as prevalent due to the change in scale. They seem limited to the proximity of the intersection. But look what else showed up. The same artifacts that I had before SR1. See those whitish discs around the top and down the left edge of the lens?