Scientist Makes Organic Matter out of Inorganic Matter

[Welsh cake]

An organic compound simply contains carbon excluding compounds that are composed of solely carbon such as diamond or graphite.

Correction, the allotropes of carbon (Diamond, Graphite, Lonsdaleite, C60 Buckminsterfullerene/buckyball, C540, C70, Amorphous carbon, and single-walled carbon nanotube/ buckytube) are all considered inorganic, not of biological origin.

Are organic substances sometimes produced independently of living things (and their by-products) in nature?

At which point its no longer an organic compound you're dealing with, its inorganic. These are the useful yet arbitrary distinctions between "organic" and "inorganic", "natural" and "synthetic" that were established and accepted today when the theory of Vitalism was disproved.

You've opened a can of worms here because there's never been a concrete definition of an "organic compound" within Organic chemistry.