How do we know they are not creating 'real' out of body experiences?
If you are assuming a material-only view of consciousness then an out-of-body experience must only be a hallucination.
If you start from the assumption that we have interpenetrating physical and astral bodies then the possibility of having created a genuine out-of-body experience is still out there.
These experiments can not get at the BIG question as it can only monitor physical activity. So the mystery goes on!