It is true, research is just an initial step for you to gauge if a project has a potential or not. Once the project gathered enough funds for project developent, it all depends on the whole team how will they maximize the fund and how will develop the platform/product as well as marketing which will determine the growth in the long-run.
Can't say much against this position, but I have one particular thing - no one actually knows if dev team of partially successful altcoin will spend their income wisely or waste it.
Thus being said you can't know for sure if an alt will dump eventually, so if you believe in one altcoin you can risk your funds and hodl on it