i cant imagine an academic group environment that toxic. Most groups ive interacted with in the sciences actively encourage everone to ask difficult questions of each other to further the collective understanding. One of the first things my advisor told me as a new student was to make sure i independently understood what was going on because he doesnt know everything. Now that im more experienced i also see the upside of having youger people around who are engaged and help catch my mistakes. Hearing horror stories about corporate power dynamics from people around me makes me never want to leave academia.
There are of course a few crazy/asshole PIs, but if you dont work for them they have no power over you.
Most labs I've been in and seen are 180 the opposite. Due to Dilbert/Peter principal dynamics, most advisors at R1 universities aren't selected based on their management and teaching skill, but on their research publications. As such, they tend to be very lacking at many skills required to be 'good' at running a lab. In the hunt for tenure, they get very stressed out and tend to take it out on others, typically the students and staff as they are physically the closest people to them.
I may or may not have been around MeToo style situations, more germane management abuse and screaming, direct sabotage of students' work and presentations. On the light side were 6 hour long lab meetings, 2 am lab check-ins, requests to journals to reject student's papers, and complete mystification at why students and staff aren't sleeping in the lab (safety be damned).
That, in my limited US based experience, is the 'norm'.
There are of course a few crazy/asshole PIs, but if you dont work for them they have no power over you.