How can I stop Illustrator's eraser tool from making small details vanish?

Question

When I use the Eraser Tool (Shift+E) in Illustrator, there is a strange and undesired effect. It seems to clean up fine details on the effected layer, sometimes removing small shapes. For example, here are some small shapes (these are fine details, note the zoom is at 1600%).

Now I click the eraser on the top-rightmost white shape, with a brush size just large enough to cover it: All but the biggest shape is gone!

Why is this happening and what can I do to prevent it?

Answer 1

I can't explain why it happens but I found a work-around: If I select the whole layer and scale it up to 3-4x its initial size, I can erase without bits disappearing. Then I scale it back down when I'm done.

My guess is that Illustrator is assuming any shape below some arbitrary threshold is junk and removing it as part of the cleanup after the eraser is used. By increasing the size of everything we sidestep that filter.