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Christian apologists spend a huge amount of time refuting every new teaching that springs up. Because the devil is continually on the job, erroneous doctrine tends to encroach upon us like jungle vines. In the early Church, every time Paul turned around, he had to combat some new falsehood that was creeping into the body of Christ.
Because an unlimited number of false doctrines is circulating in the world, rather than reading up on what everyone else believes, I think it's a far easier task to focus on what we should believe concerning God's Kingdom.
In many cases, heretical doctrine can be very difficult to detect. A lie can be wrapped in 95% truth and still be a lie. This is why we need to use the Word of God like a Geiger counter. And we don’t just need to use it to help us discern the truth about what others believe, we also need to use the Bible to help us evaluate what we believe because deceived people are often led to believe that everyone else is in the grip of deception.
One of the easiest ways to identify false doctrine is to constantly remember that there is nothing new under the sun. If someone comes to you with a new revelation or a vision he or his organization claims to have received from God, this new doctrine needs to parrot what is already plainly written in the Bible in order to be considered truth.
New doctrine also must stand up against any opposing passages. Several years ago, a group in California claimed that the Bible granted the right to smoke marijuana. They cited Genesis 1:30: "I have given every green herb for meat." The local police allowed this band of potheads to get away with smoking grass in public on the grounds of religious freedom until they caught some of them selling the green herb to undercover agents.
Genesis 1:30 does say that God has given us every green herb; however, elsewhere in the Bible it says we should be sober-minded. Taking a stand against man's first choice of drugs and alcohol, the Word of God says, "For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation" (1 Th. 5:7-8 KJV).