45
distribution was valid; all the rest had to be thrown ou
the
IQ scores now fall into a bell curve mainly because that is where the original
English and American *psychometricians thought they should fall. But suppose they'd
started out with different preconceptions. Suppose they believed that "intelligence"
was something like "health": some people were weak and some were strong, but most
people were "healthy enough." Their bodies may have been shaped differently, but one
50 type couldn't be called healthier than another. In that case, the distribution of IQ
scores would have been very different.