The scam tokens might hurt the tech indirectly:

People will distrust, oppose and regulate technology precisely because it is being [or can be] misused.

We [the early adopters, tech proponents, developers, cryptocurrency media] and are not the ones who will make the laws based on fears, hidden agenda or because lots of people get scammed.

What we can do is to create as much "trust space" as possible. We need to advocate for caution, build trustworthy ICO scoring websites, publish guides, educate. We basically need to outnumber the scammers and try to marginalize their activity within the most probable channels where people will start learning about Ethereum, smart contract and cryptocurrencies in general.