It's not just a handful of anecdotes though. I gave a handful of anecdotes that I was able to round up in about 5 minutes of searching. I don't think that the opinion of researchers, uninformed by hard data, and your single anecdote is enough to counter that.
> I found no research on long term polyphasic sleep (short naps)
That is correct. The research doesn't exist. That's why I said "eh, maybe" in my original comment. Whether or not polyphasic truly can work in the long term for most people is not a settled question. It is completely possible that the anecdotes of people who are successful in the long term simply have an unusual genetic predisposition to needing less sleep. There is a plausible rationale for a selection bias on multiple levels to explain the anecdotes; people who need less sleep may be more interested in sleep hacking, and they would be far more likely to make it past the initial adaptation period.
It's also far more likely that polyphasic sleep schedules that include at least one period of "core sleep" are sustainable (e.g. Everyman) than nap-only schedules. And at the extreme end you have biphasic sleep, which gives 6-7 hours and actually has some historical evidence to back it up.
Of course, biphasic won't get you a 20 hour workday. Everyman can, if all you do is sleep and work. That's going to be unhealthy for other reasons, but whether or not it's unhealthy because of sleep deprivation is an open question.
> I found no research on long term polyphasic sleep (short naps)
That is correct. The research doesn't exist. That's why I said "eh, maybe" in my original comment. Whether or not polyphasic truly can work in the long term for most people is not a settled question. It is completely possible that the anecdotes of people who are successful in the long term simply have an unusual genetic predisposition to needing less sleep. There is a plausible rationale for a selection bias on multiple levels to explain the anecdotes; people who need less sleep may be more interested in sleep hacking, and they would be far more likely to make it past the initial adaptation period.
It's also far more likely that polyphasic sleep schedules that include at least one period of "core sleep" are sustainable (e.g. Everyman) than nap-only schedules. And at the extreme end you have biphasic sleep, which gives 6-7 hours and actually has some historical evidence to back it up.
Of course, biphasic won't get you a 20 hour workday. Everyman can, if all you do is sleep and work. That's going to be unhealthy for other reasons, but whether or not it's unhealthy because of sleep deprivation is an open question.