Gold can be made, and it does not pay

Nuclear reactions transmute other elements into gold. Accelerators have done it. The yield is atoms, often radioactive, and the cost exceeds the metal.

Chemistry cannot turn lead or bismuth into gold, because chemistry never touches the nucleus, and the nucleus is what makes an element. A particle accelerator can. In 1980 and 1981, groups including Glenn Seaborg's reported gold isotopes among the fragments of bismuth nuclei smashed at high energy. The gold was real, identified by its radiation, and it was not a nugget.

The isotopes produced are typically unstable. The energy spent per atom is grotesque compared with the price of gold. Transmutation is a solved physics problem and an unsolved, probably permanently unsolved, economic one. Medieval recipes with furnaces and toad's blood were not close.