  The geometric phase is usually treated as a quantity modulo 2\pi, a
convention carried over from early work on the subject. The results of a series
of optical interference experiments involving polarization of light, done by
the present author (reviewed in R.Bhandari, Phys. Rep. 281 (1997) p.1) question
the usefulness of such a definition of the geometric phase in that it throws
away useful and measurable information about the system, for example strengths
of singularities giving rise to the geometric phase. Such singularities have
been directly demonstrated by phase-shift measurement in interference
experiments. In this paper, two recent polarization experiments (Hariharan
et.al., J.Mod.Opt. 44 (1997)p.707 and Berry and Klein, J.Mod.Opt. 43
(1996)p.165) are analysed and compared with previous experiments and
potentially detectible singularities in these experiments pointed out.
