Questions:
If a pilot dies of cancer in his 60s or 70s, is that attributable to sleep deprivation?
If a pilot dies in his 50s from a heart attack during strenuous exercise is that attributable to sleep deprivation?
If a pilot dies in his 50s from a heart attack on his farm on a day off is that attributable to sleep deprivation?
If a pilot dies in his 90s, does that mean he didn’t fly many hours at night or is he just a good daytime sleeper.
All reasonable questions.
To answer those would require a longitudinal study with a rather large sample size.
Correlated risk factors would be inferred were there to be sufficient repeated observations and statistical significance.
I AM questioning the assertions that Project Sunrise pilots are not going to live as long as non-Sunrise pilots.
I AM questioning the link between abolishing night credits and pilots not living as long as they otherwise would if night credits were not abolished.
Without a robust statistically valid test none of the answers will be forthcoming. The best a valid sample will generate is inferential, but likely with a relatively high level of confidence.
The starting point for this would be simply to look at the long term sick leave for cabin and pilot crew and look/observe these outcomes over a number of years. This representative sample would then be contrasted to the general population.
Little Napoleon is as likely to welcome scrutiny of the last X years of health data as he is to give back his ill-gotten gains.
Unfortunately neither N=1 or N=3 with "chosen staff and crew" as the "representative sample" are likely to generate anything more than column inches in the daily rag and a nice junket for selected staff including a former AIPA President turned IR negotiator, Mr Safe.