It's hard to tell if an ICO is scam or not on the early stage of the project. Whitepapers are so deceiving right now that they look so promising. No one can detect that unless you do your own research about the team and have your own jurisdiction on that specific ICO.
How about the opinion of websites that make their overviews of the ICOs. Like Hacked Analysis. They make their own research of about the team, check for potential competitors of the ICO, etc. Do you think you can trust their opinion or only own research counts?