True, scam project makes investors losing their money and time, not only investors but bounty hunters as well, losing time and efforts in vain.
I think the best way to know whether the project is real or fake is by their whitepaper first. Scammers are lazy to make whitepaper from 0, then the plagiarized whitepaper is the important sign of scam project, even the slightest plagiarized content.
Yeah, this is an effective way. Also, we can do location checking, looking for team members, team records, etc. All of that is to ensure that there is not too much percentage of scam. Doing researches such as those things can effectively help us to reduce the rate of being scammed in this market. Though, it's not an easy task that we need to learn how to do it right!