[_v7gu]

Since you have a throwaway account, why not name and shame? At worst, it would give some information any student who was thinking about applying to your department.

Lab sciences tend to have accepted "the way things" go: your advisors got through some abuse too, so they think it's natural. I think some additional fuel comes from that you have to have an advisor to get into grad school. I'm from a field where the order is reversed (we have two years before finalizing our advisor, and changing is less of an hassle) and such abuse is much rarer. It might also have to do with my field's obsession with freely flowing information: people can just avoid advisors who are documented to be problematic.

As some kind of glue to bind this together, I offer you the plight of HB1 workers. They are tied to their jobs similarly to the way PhD students are tied to their advisors. Yes they could change their jobs, but it's a big hassle and leaves you at the risk of having to leave the country/dropping out of the program. And we also see tons of abuse directed specifically toward these workers, even when others have it good.

So my point is as long as you haven't forcibly bound yourself to a job, you're less likely to receive that kind of abuse. And in the worst case (if you encounter one of many, many shitty bosses), you can just leave for greener pastures.