Something I've been debating posting, but I think I'm new enough at this that I'll gain some valuable insight here from some of your responses, so I'll go ahead.
When I first started deco diving not too long ago, obviously the fear of getting bent lead me to do a lot of reading up. From reading first hand accounts of being bent, I couldn't find any relationship between the deco algorithm used, and rates of being bent. Obviously this doesn't mean a lot, since very few people will admit to being bent, and if they do, I doubt they'd admit to violating a profile, screwing up their tables, or messing up avg depth. Honestly if you look at minor details of messing up a deco algorithm, it really doesn't throw your schedule off too much (maybe a few minutes?), so I'm guessing most cases aren't due to these factors.
One thing I did however notice, was that a surprisingly high number of cases were occurring on vacations. My own inference here is lack of sleep as well as dehydration (drinking the night before the dive?), but I'm just throwing that out there to see if others think it might be something worth considering? :smt102
I've also found it interesting to see HOW different people pad their safety margin.
Some work out and stay in shape, drink TONS of water (even bringing camel packs for during the dive), ensure they're diving dry with plenty of exposure protection to stay toasty warm, do at least 5min surface deco debriefing the dive, and get a good nights rest before any deco dive. From what I can tell, most of those who fall into this group don't pad their deco schedules much. Others will add 5min to their o2 time or something along those lines, or pad their overall schedule with time.
GUE has an interesting dvd about decompression, that if you haven't seen it, is worth your time and whatever they're charging for it these days. Much of it is over my head, but it does go into details of why decompression sickness remains such a mystery, and theories that are being tested to prevent it.