'Unintended consequences,' anyone?
I was a bit puzzled why someone would volunteer for a study meant to make him work longer hours, until I remembered an anecdote a Swedish friend told me.
A regional airline had two pilots working back-to-back, when one would do mornings and the other one afternoons. They got together and decided to instead work alternate weeks, so that one guy did the entire week's flying, exceeding his allowed duty time but then getting the whole next week off, when life was held to be good.
On a bi-weekly average his duty time was within limits, 'only' being exceeded on a weekly basis. This would seem to be the logic behind this latest experiment.
The arrangement between the two pilots worked just fine until someone back at base noticed that the same name appeared in the tech log all day long. There were repercussions such that two pilots re-entered the job market, unrecognised pioneers of the air.