I'm just not convinced that what I'm looking at in the first render posted by the OP, on the hand, is actual artifacts as much as it is just unwanted reflections...

...which to a lesser extent... and indeed even to the extent I see it there, are not in fact that unrealistic??

If they're something equivalent to fireflies though, maybe they're bursts of excess translucency from the scatter or something?

Maybe I'm not seeing what's being referred to though...? I keep having to remove the tiny specs of white dust from my LCD to make out which are the actual white dots on the hands... LOL :)