You cannot get scammed with a Proof-of-Work coin.
You don't right. You CAN get scamed with PoW too. Premine, instamine and other shit like this.
Not so easy, the source is there, you can check everything before investing (mining)
Mining is not so easy, there is whales that can control the miners who can get new coins. What you can do is beg for them to vote for you.
Don't mine X11, Scrypt etc. coins.. Watch for new algo coins, mine them with CPU/GPU, follow the right people @ Twitter and you're good ..
