Guess it's point of view. Bell curves in my experience were used in school by teachers who decided that a certain percentage of people normally got a's, b's, c's, etc. And their method of grading was to take the highest score, call that an "A", then use statistical frequency to disperse the other scores amongst the curve to determine what each person would get for a grade. 68 out of 100 could then be an A. That is forcing the observed to fit the statistical curve. This is done within archeology as well. When a sample is found that defies dating by "accepted" methods, it is forced to fit the curve by throwing out the strata dating method and the carbon dating numbers. Evolutionists especially do not like abberations which call their defined "norms" into question. Bell curves allow one to get by with murder, essentially - by throwing out what is not convenient and forcing things into the model, you avoid unpleasant realities which cannot be otherwise explained. Case in point - deep coal and the carbon problem.
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That wasn't necessarily a bell curve--a distribution of student scores may, or may not have a noticable central tendency. That likely was the parameters of a bell curve stolen for other purposes. As regards your reference to dating abberations, you are vastly underestimating, to the point of resembling a comic book distortion, the care and effort that goes into the dating methodologies we use. Science is highly skeptical, as a matter of routine, of any single derived measuring system. In genuine science, there are a number of them used to cross-check each other, and when statistically significant conflict exists, it is not fudged over and cherry-picked--it invalidates the readings or the methodology.
As to Deep Coal--it has long been observed by oil geologists that that they did better drilling into layers of the planet that were laid down during the hot, moist eras, when the most carbon was fixed by the most critters. Whether Deep Coal changes this story or not, and how, remains to be seen.