Funny. Every country in the fertile crescent claims to be the “cradle of civilization” because archaeologists found remains of ancient cultures within their borders. Those ancient cultures have jack shit to do with the modern day peoples living there, but that doesn’t stop the countries from laying claim to the heritage, based on the geographical location of the findings.
Similar, yet different is when a country has one famous son from the scientific community and instrumentalizes him to lay claim to scientific methodology as a whole. This is commonly known as “bullshit”.
An old Sumerian saying goes “the fox pissed into the ocean and claimed: ‘the whole ocean is my urin’.”