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.
Right. If you don't like the numbers you throw them out. Even if the numbers are tested and retested and verified. If they don't fit your preconcieved notions of what you want to find, you kill the data. This is exactly what has been done with the 14c numbers on deep coal. When numbers came up that did damage to the established norms by upholding what had been predicted by the other side. The numbers were thrown out as "contaminated sample" results. Since we know that you guys are guessing. It's presumptuous to throw out data because it doesn't match your guess but rather disproves it - is it not. Especially when the samples are rechecked and the numbers sustained. LOL. But yes, the bell curve concept is used to force data into "acceptable" ranges, while allowing anything unacceptable to be thrown out. If you don't have to consider evidence, you can never consider evidence that disproves you. That's a game I see in archeology regularly.