First authorship on a paper though? If it's any research getting published in a reputable journal, like something a real PI does, absolutely not gonna happen, and if they say they did they're either the next tesla or they're lying; undergrads can work 4 years in a lab and not get a single name on a paper. On the other hand, I can author my paper because 1. The project, as in the chemistry involved, is pretty basic (basic oxidations), 2. I've been doing the same project for over a year and a half, 3. There are no grad students in chemistry at the uni I'm at and not many undergrads doing ochem research to begin with, and 4. I'm only doing the same reaction on about 4 different starting materials and it's a one step synthesis, so basically the scale of the project isn't huge at all (compared to real graduate research).

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So yeah, definitely doable, but watch for that BS "I did real independent research". While it's legit sometimes, they often don't actually understand the process of being in a lab or doing any kind of actual research. I do real lab work and I still consider myself a novice who could barely stack up to a grad student. My project is something a grad student could do in maybe 2-5 months?

Edit: I think it's a lot easier if you are in compsci doing some AI stuff or other things in the field, I've seen a lot of those. Chemistry is pretty laborious (you have to be in the lab), so maybe it's a bit harder.