Here are two articles quite skeptical of polyphasic sleep that might be of interest.
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm
I don’t necessarily agree with the author, but I guess it’s good to be aware of arguments on both sides of the debate.
Jared Diamond, in Guns Germs and Steel, argues that when the time is ripe scientific discoveries are made quite regardless of who makes them, give or take a few decades. Most discoveries are incremental, and many are made by multiple people simultaneously. So wouldn’t a discovery that isn’t published be just made elsewhere in a few years time, possibly by someone without many ethical concerns?