Most products throughout history that were first do not remain on top for long.  Bitcoin has had an incredible run, but being first has its downsides...like all of the flaws and limitations are coming out.  Whether or not other competing altcoins will experience the same problems remains to be seen but to new investors the biggest concern will be to choose the coin that has the most utility in the here and now.

Crowd thinking - that only works until people realize that there are other options.  Even in the mainstream news articles lately the author will usually mention alt-coins by their names as options for new investors to consider.  They never did that before...or at least not like they do now.

As far as scams go, there are countless people that wanted to get into Bitcoin this year but had no idea how.  So they asked friends that referred them to someone that was pooling money to supposedly invest as a group....to leave the hard part of buying to them.  Of course these people are taking their money and running or buying the coins and then disappearing 99 times out of 100.

If you are talking about scams related to alt-coins, the odds of the top 20-30 coins are probably equally legitimate relative to one another.  Note:  That statement doesn't prove or disprove that any or all of them are or are not ripping users off somehow either now or in the future.  So it's up to the individual to interpret what is legitimate about the whole cryptosphere and what is shady.