As far as I know, writing a research paper at all as an undergraduate is unusual.

In the US, afaik, the purpose of undergraduate work is to learn the material of the field. A Phd program then teaches the student how to do research in a field and the student goes on to do actual research only then.

An undergraduate would do a research paper as independent study or a special department class I think. With the provision that advisor is doing a lot of hand holding.

So handing fake data to someone's whose effectively a complete newby and letting them process it and publish it as their first achievement, is really despicable as the article seems to describe.

The base data in this case was (supposedly) collected by the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding, rather than anyone in the lab. However that Centre denies having the samples in their database.