  We examine a recent proposal to show the presence of nonlocal Pancharatnam
type geometric phases in a quantum mechanical treatment of intensity
interferometry measurements upon inclusion of polarizing elements in the setup.
It is shown that a completely classical statistical treatment of such effects
is adequate for practical purposes. Further we show that the phase angles that
appear in the correlations, while at first sight appearing to resemble
Pancharatnam phases in their mathematical structure, cannot actually be
interpreted in that manner. We also describe a simpler Mach-Zehnder type setup
where similar effects can be observed without use of the paraxial
approximation.
