by Dr. Howard Markel
Getting committed proved rather easy, even if neither Bly nor her editors had a clear plan of getting her released once the story was filed. She took a room at a cheap boarding house, “Temporary Home for Females, No. 84 Second Avenue,” under the name Bly Brown and began questioning and imitating the women who seemed most insane to her. Soon enough, it was Bly who was deemed crazy. The matron of the house enlisted a few cops to escort Bly to the Essex Market Police Courtroom, where an impatient judge named Duffy pronounced her insane and ordered her to the famed insane ward at Bellevue Hospital, the city’s largest charitable hospital.
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Question
Use the excerpt from the “How Nellie Bly went undercover to expose abuse of the mentally ill” article to answer the question.
Which of the following would be an invalid inference to make about this excerpt?
(1 point)
Responses
Only someone who was medically qualified could declare someone mentally insane.
Only someone who was medically qualified could declare someone mentally insane.
People found it important to give the mentally insane a safe place to live.
People found it important to give the mentally insane a safe place to live.
People considered the mentally insane to be unable to determine their own status.
People considered the mentally insane to be unable to determine their own status.
The mentally insane were considered a danger to society.
1 answer
The invalid inference to make about this excerpt is:
Only someone who was medically qualified could declare someone mentally insane.
This inference is invalid because the excerpt demonstrates that the judge, who is not necessarily a medical professional, declared Bly insane without evident medical qualification, pointing to a broader societal assumption about mental illness that does not require medical expertise for such declarations.
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