There is a negative, though, and I have experienced it diving. Diving is often a razor thin or no margin business, and selling cert courses can be easy money. Few scuba schools will fail students who are not up to snuff, because they might have to issue a refund or endure bad reviews. Some of these certifications will give incompetent divers a false sense of ability, and in an emergency situation, rather than staying out of the way, they create another problem.

The solution to that would seem to be recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills. Recommending against getting training is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

If you have no experience, just a cert, then you should stay out of the way with those with experience and help as requested.

However, with many dive accidents, you don't have the luxury of waiting for a more experienced diver and having that training will give you a better chance of saving your buddy's life.

> recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills

I think the point was that such schools get bad reviews, and look like bad choices, might get out completed by more lax schools

Apparently academia (universities) works a bit in the same way, there was a recent HN discussion

In my experience, I was able to fairly accurately glean a lot about the culture of a dive shop by the reviews it got.

I think that people often just go with the cheapest option without doing the additional research.

The people should definitely get the training, but probably without the cert. The cert for certain things, like rescue in particular, should probably be validated by an external agency that isn't the school

unless you have actual experience in helping, your "help" can quickly become a liability, no matter how well intentioned.

not to say you shouldnt get a rescue cert, but that alone is insufficient if you have no actual and recent or long term experience.

On the flip side, if you have never tried to rescue an unconscious diver and have to do it for the first time without any training, you are not going to have the luxury of making all the mistakes you will make in the rescue class.

While a cert is no substitute for experience, if you are going to gain that experience, it is much better to have a cert than not.