It is necessary for science to serve private gain as only this would motivate innovation and generate scientific progress.

Humans have an inherent nature to seek self-interest and hence would only to want to invest in things that would be able to bring personal returns. Most scientific research requires a large amount of investment and funding as the multiple stages of trial runs and testing, as well as the equipment and materials used in experiments are highly costly. This means that most scientific research has to be funded by private organizations and firms that are profit oriented. One example of such a firm is 3M. It spends a large amount of money funding research and development as its corporate image is built on its innovate products. While this money was spent trying to develop unique inventions, like the post-it note invented in the 1970s by a 3M employee, to increase revenue for the company, it ultimately promotes scientific development. Hence it can be seen that the best motivation to fuel scientific progress is through the incentive of personal gain. Also, science need not serve either public good or private gain as these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. By advancing scientific research with the motive of private gain, one does in fact produce public good. One recent example that depicts this would be James Camerons dive down to the Mariana Trench. While Cameron went on this expedition for the purpose of producing a 3D documentary on the deepest point on earth, and gaining profit from such a production, in the process he collected research samples for marine biology, geology and geophysics. These samples are crucial in allowing scientists to study and further their understanding on the depths of the ocean. However this would not have been possible if not for the collaboration with Cameron as such research involves a sizable amount of funding. Thus, while motivated by personal gains, Cameron benefited the public good as in producing such a movie, he managed to bring great developments to scientific research which would otherwise have been impossible without his funding.