Relating to or consisting of artifacts; caused by or resulting from the process of making something artificial.
From 'artifact' + '-ual' (relating to). The adjective form developed as scientists needed language to distinguish artifact-related phenomena from natural occurrences in research.
In science, finding an 'artifactual' result is actually valuable—it teaches researchers about their methods; for instance, discovering contamination was artifactual rather than real data can revolutionize understanding of an experiment.
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