The court was already treating the afflicted girls as important witnesses. Calling the performance false did not make the system neutral again.
Some contemporaries were skeptical of the afflicted girls and of spectral evidence. But there was no formal rule saying that criticizing an accuser automatically proved witchcraft, and the record does not support measuring exactly how many days such criticism “cost” a defendant. The safer historical claim is structural: challenging the accusers meant challenging evidence the magistrates were already taking seriously.
That could leave a defendant in a worse position socially and procedurally. A person who called the fits false still had to answer the underlying accusation before officials who had watched those fits and credited the people performing them.
John Proctor openly expressed skepticism about the proceedings and the afflicted girls. On April 11, when Elizabeth Proctor was examined in the Salem Town meetinghouse, John was there with her; he too was questioned and held for trial. He was later convicted and hanged on August 19.
That sequence does not prove that skepticism by itself caused his accusation or execution. Proctor's case involved multiple allegations. What it does show is that openly rejecting the afflicted testimony offered no procedural shield once the Salem machinery had turned toward you.
The modern analogy is institutional retaliation, not a one-to-one legal match. Organizations can become defensive when someone attacks the credibility of the process itself, which is why modern whistleblower laws try to separate criticism of an institution from punishment by that institution. Salem had no comparable safeguard for a defendant attacking the credibility of the witnesses the magistrates believed.
Being right about a bad process is not the same thing as being safe inside it.