Okay, I'm going bonkers over this, and I can't find a Chrome extension that purports to prevent it (there is one, but it has terrible reviews).
Lately, many websites that I visit frequently (imgur.com, thr.org) are displaying ads, either static pictures or Flash, that prompt the browser to refresh the page. It is unnoticeable until I use my preferred method of navigation to return to the previous page: backspace. However, since the page refreshed on me, my browser history is full of one or more iterations of the site, and the backspace or back arrow essentially does nothing. Disabling JavaScript seems to work, but it also disables some of the content that I want to see. The Onion's site refreshed the page almost twenty times during a 1:30m video, but with Java disabled I wouldn't have been able to watch it at all.
I know the easiest solution is to open every link in a new tab, but this has hacked me off enough to ask for help. I want my backspace to work, damn it!