yes, read the white paper is important. because it is a document that contains an explanation of a problem that a project wants to solve, a solution to the problem, and an explanation of the details of the project, its creation, and interaction with the user.
The Whitepaper does not have that much on it too, reading it completely could be done in 20 minutes.
So many scammers are plagiarize other project's whitepaper and that can't be trusted to define how good that project is. the whitepaper just like a usual thing and it can't be considered as an important factor right now. So many scammers in the ico have been creating the same whitepaper. It's such a garbage thing right now even tron ever plagiarize the filecoin WP.