[jamesash]

Two most extreme stories I am most familiar with (did not experience first-hand) were of a PI throwing a chair in the direction of a postdoc, and of a PI having a screaming fit directly in the face of a graduate student. Both assistant profs.

One got tenure and became more mellow in a relative sense. The other was subsequently unable to attract any more graduate students to their lab, and left for another, slightly less prestigious institution.

I am also familiar with one case of graduate students resigning en masse, leaving a PI with a hollowed-out research group of 2-3 that they had to rebuild. Prof had a subsequent attitude adjustment.

In all these cases the stories spread pretty quickly and profs realized that there were costs to abusive behavior. These stories pre-date social media BTW.