Some basic stuff to research including :
1. Whitepaper. Most scam ICO usually have don't have or have bad quality whitepaper which can be spotted easily.
2. Roadmap.
3. Goal/Vision.
4. ICO's team.
5. How they promote. I've seen some obvious scam ICO which promote fast profit or return, and obviously it's fake.
But, even they have solid goal with competent team, doesn't mean the ICO will be success though. If those entrepreneurs don't bother to do research or don't want to take risk, they shouldn't invest in ICO.
Agreed. We should be breeding a culture of due diligence instead of taking companies at face value. There's nothing wrong with advertising because great projects like Polymath are doing it because of the world they're getting into.