When science isn't driven at least in part by problem solving, there's a tendency to wander off into interesting but arcane fields with little potential for application any time soon.

You can argue that eventually all science will be useful somehow or that as long as someone finds it interesting, it doesn't really matter. But, it seems a waste for brilliant minds to pursue largely irrelevant questions when they could dramatically make the world a better place now just by shifting their interests a bit.