Anecdotal, but there have been a number of times I've clicked a result on Google, and have been unable to get back to the results page without either double clicking the back button or finding it in the history. You'd just go to the original page that redirects you to the actual content and get stuck in a loop.

Its absolutely true. Why would google disregard such absolutely accurate data about the quality of its presented results? Now, It may or may not be true that webmasters do this for that reason or they are just lazy. Doing specially crafted redirects (mostly from mobile to full sites) does it. Here is a example, where you cant press the back button

http://m.washingtonpost.com/local/adams-morgan-hate-crime-wa...

If Google is really using that algorithm, then I'm afraid I'm polluting their data. When I am looking for something on Google, I ctrl+click on all the relevant-looking links so they open in new tabs. Since I haven't even read any of the results yet, it is inaccurate to assume that the last link I ctrl+clicked was the most relevant.

Am curious on how this is done? Like a Javascript hack? Does it affect the Google ranking?

I too would think that the redirect links from Google are search-instance specific.

Have you ever read ArsTechnica with javascript on?