To quibble just a bit I think that it is occasionally (tho probably not in the terminator examples the paper briefly mentioned) reasonable to use a very throughly fleshed out fictional account as evidence of plausibility. I mean by giving a detailed narrative you rule out the possibility the idea is internally incoherent or requires some really really implausible things to be true.
Still, I don’t think this is a very strong effect and is overestimated all the time by people who think that literature gives more than entertainment/enjoyment but actually gives insight.
I think the issue is that science tells us that there is a certain kind of explanation, not just that there is some explanation.
Most people (at some level) want to believe in something bigger than themselves that cares about human concerns. The reason that magic is exciting so long as it doesn’t have a scientific explanation is that it holds out the possibility that is responds to human concerns.
Think for a moment about the differences between a science fiction book and fantasy book. Both of them endow their major characthers to accomplish astounding feats through essentially unexplained means but the the hyperdrive button or the transporter has a very different feeling to it than the spell. Why? Because the scifi gadgets presumably work on micro-physical laws that are indifferent to people’s emotions while spells are depicted as responding to human emotions like hate, love and need. People want to believe in a universe that cares about these human level concerns and that’s why they believe in ghosts, god, psychics etc...
Now I think that if you said ‘science’ that would dispel the interest from most folk but wouldn’t do much to dispel the interest of scientists. I mean why should common folk be curious about this since saying ‘science’ means it’s going to be just another of the innumerable technologies they don’t really understand but see every day. By making the phenomena seem like magic you held out the hope for a second of something that would be much more interesting to them (they are rationally sure they won’t understand any scientific explanation anyway).
In short I think this is just a complex way of illustrating the fact that many people would like to believe in something other than materialism.