But my impression is that in the lab sciences (or any crunch mode job) you are made to feel that everyone relies on you so you are stuck taking care of them, whereas the gratitude model is that the company is so nice to you that you want to earn the respect they give you.

Actually, it's more subtle and more pernicious in biology. First, you make sure that your wage slaves have no marketable skills (a PhD in molecular biology is comparable to a community college graduate). Then you carefully isolate them from all perspective and knowledge of career tracks other than the academic treadmill. Finally, you dangle the PhD in front of grad students ("You can't quit now, you won't get anything! You have to hold on until you have the degree! It's all or nothing!"), until they've sunk so many years in that they aren't willing to abandon the sunk time. Then you set up a culture where ridiculous hours and inadequate support are considered normal and make the payoff for the bosses be to get as much labor out of someone as they can get before shoving them out the door to the next slave master. The behavior of your average professor towards his lab would have him slapped with lawsuits in normal work environments.

Are there Ivory Tower Anonymous meetings I can attend? I recently turned in my yearly activity report, and I finally (ten years) realized that it has become a list of things I absolutely hate doing. I think it's time to give this "industry" I keep hearing about a go...