In my opinion, doing own research or due diligence is inevitable part of investment process. Moreover, it is very often when general success of investments is crucially depends from that, may be a bit boring, step.
If you are not a peofessional investor then you simply cant know which project is legit and which project is a scam. It is nice to do research to know more about the project, but when you do research at most case you do not find out that it is a scam 
.