  We discuss the possibility of constraining theories of gravity in which the
connection is a fundamental variable by searching for observational
consequences of the torsion degrees of freedom. In a wide class of models, the
only modes of the torsion tensor which interact with matter are either a
massive scalar or a massive spin-1 boson. Focusing on the scalar version, we
study constraints on the two-dimensional parameter space characterizing the
theory. For reasonable choices of these parameters the torsion decays quickly
into matter fields, and no long-range fields are generated which could be
discovered by ground-based or astrophysical experiments.
