I would like to add, Zach, that even though not all scientific inquiry is not pursued with human interest in mind, sometimes, great benefits to humans might come out of the science anyway. We never know ahead of time what we will learn, and therefore, we never know how what we will learn may be useful either now, or later. Historically, a lot of scientific knowledge hasn't been all that useful when the knowledge was first produced, but became useful later, when someone else, with access to better technology, picked up that knowledge and made something useful out of it. People often think that there's no use to scientific knowledge that has no immediate usefulness, forgetting that that knowledge might just change the world one day.
Mendel's pea experiments, and the knowledge that he derived from them, that phenotypic characteristics are inherited as "particles" you get, one from each parent, were of very little use to anyone in the 1800s. Or for a large chunk of the 1900s. But today, combined with the knowledge of the structure of DNA discovered in the mid-1900s, and with the more recently developed technology to reliably replicate DNA in the lab, the scientific community can identify genes that make people ill, and that bestow resistance to HIV, and allow people to get genetic counseling before they have kids if they want to minimize their chances of producing a kid with CF, or Tay-Sachs. And then of course there's paternity testing and all the financial stakes of people pinned up in that--that's just plain and simple punnet squares is all. Mendel's "trivial" understanding of how pea pods get their color and skin type and how pea plants get their flower color had to come first.
If science only focuses on things that have obvious benefit to humanity now, the focus of science will become very narrow, and we will effectively cut off our noses to spite our faces by not investigating all the many things in the world that don't seem useful now, but might be of paramount importance later. And these days, with scientific communication being SO global, and with the pace of technological change being so rapid, the odds are good that someone is going to see and be able to capitalize on the utility of almost any scientific knowledge a heck of a lot sooner than 150 years from now.
(This is actually a very important issue, because science research funding is shrinking, and is often shifting heavily these days toward applied sciences.)
I'm just merely pointing out that your claim is unsubstantiated by any proof. If you read a more detailed article, then please by all means offer it as proof to back up your claim. 
