The US is one of only 3 countries (the other 2 are Myanmar and Liberia) in the entire world that doesn't use the metric system as the official system of measure. This creates barriers for interaction between citizens of our country and other countries. These barriers helped cause the Mars Orbiter disaster.
The metrication doesn't have to be done overnight. Instead, our government can create programs to help our country slowly align with the rest of the globe and help our people slowly get comfortable with the metric system.
Our scientists will benefit, too. With the US metricated, scientific data (which is always SI) will be usable by the population and will mean something to them. If experimentees give their input as metric, scientists will be able to use the data more effectively.