Shield Spell no help for touch attacks

Actually, no. You have your notions swapped and comingled and cross pollinated.

From incorporeal...

"The physical attacks of incorporeal creatures ignore material armor, even magic armor, unless it is made of force (such as mage armor or bracers of armor) or has the ghost touch ability. "

There is no "incorporeral touch attack" rule for force effects... there is just the PHYSICAL attack special rule.

There is the specificTOUCH ATTACK rule.

"Touch Attacks: Some attacks disregard armor, including shields and natural armor. In these cases, the attacker makes a touch attack roll (either ranged or melee). When you are the target of a touch attack, your AC doesn't include any armor bonus, shield bonus, or natural armor bonus. All other modifiers, such as your size modifier, Dexterity modifier, and deflection bonus (if any) apply normally."

Touch attacks and incorporeal physical attacks share some similarities... both will ignore armor and shields in most cases... but the specific "force effect applies" is for incorporeal physical attacks, not for touch attacks.

So, while they share some properties, they are two totally separate game mechanics with their own rules and the KEY difference between them is that force effects matter for incorporeal physical and do not matter for touch attacks.

BTW, if you did count force effects for touch attacks, then things like mage armor and bracers would count too, which is not, IMO, what people would see as reasonable.

To me, the shield bonus should have been for "shields" carried on your person and lumped in with armor (as they are now) but the shield spell (which is separate from you physically) should be a different category for "stuff between us" which would IMO be either a cover bonus or a deflection bonus.

Fredrik Svanberg said:

Wouldn't the ability to protect against incorporeal touch attacks imply that the shield also protects against normal touch attacks, since incorporeal touch attacks are in general better than normal touch attacks? The reasoning - "it is a force effect" - would seem to apply to corporeal as well as incorporeal foes.

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