Mack once asked something very profound about abductees: “Why would anyone want to believe they were abducted.?’’
Did Dr Mack's meaning escape you?
Maybe I can help.
His point was that there was NO reason anyone would LIKE to believe they were abducted to be subjected to horrific and terrifying 'medical' procedures. That therefore, more respect was due their narrative.
i.e. There was no rational explanation for their narrative other than that it was relating true facts truly experienced. They were obviously NOT concocting such stories as some delightfully delusional fantasy or imaginary journey.
There's no rational way to discount Dr Mack's research. It was scientifically carried out; logically analyzed and fittingly interpreted.
He went into the research as an agnostic--a skeptical agnostic. He figured there was some psychological explanation but was keen to see where the data took him.
The DATA convinced him that the subjects were talking about real events that had truly happened to them. They were NOT relating hallucinations. They were NOT blathering on about delusional stuff. They were merely describing real life events that they had personally experienced in their physical bodies.
Your hyper-rationalist construction on reality has no fitting explanation for those facts.
But the more I studied this stuff, the more I realized that there were common elements in all the accounts...so many in fact that it would be impossible for all these people to describe such similar, horrifying details.
Mack's clinical and meticulously empirical approach to these events pretty much backs up his conclusion that "something very real is going on here" (I paraphrase).