As Shot isn't even close.

Question

This problem is not specific to ACR, but rather an example of industry-wide brain damage, Aperture and LightZone get this wrong too. BreezeBrowser and dcraw get it right.
The issue is simple, or rather oversimplification. All of these new "Pro" tools believe that white balance can always be expressed in a color temperature and a green/magenta tint. While that's true if your entire world is illuminated by pure blackbody radiation, it's mostly wrong in a growing number of cases (the green/magenta tint is a tip of the hat to fluorescent lighting, but it's still insufficient for some stage lighting and I've had odd problems with LED sources)
My case is the most extreme, and most annoying: I shoot infrared with modified cameras. I've removed the IR cutoff filter from the camera, and typically shoot through a red or IR-only filter. This produces false-color images that often have quite striking color variations. I always shoot RAW, and make a point of setting the white balance in-camera when I'm shooting.
When ACR (or any of these other apps) do the RAW conversion, they mangle the WB data to fit this temp-and-tint view of the world, and the result is usually bright red pictures.
I though the point of a "Pro" application was to give the user more control, not less.
ACR is actually more infuriating that most of the other apps, because it has a big shiny "As Shot" button that is an outright lie. It's actually "Pretend to be As Shot, but destroy information trying to fit it to an insufficient model"

Answer 1

Lawrence,
You're exactly right. I do want the data in the deep red and near infrared. The false color images exploit differences in the IR pass characteristics of the various colors in the Bayer array (thus Canon G1s with their CYGM array produce rather different results)
Whether or not the WB is 'correct' is kind of beside the point. The WB is there, represents the desired effect, and ACR mangles it. It seems incredible to me that ACR cannot reproduce the embedded JPEG because it "knows better." I was hoping that there was some way in which ACR could be persuaded to use that data correctly, thus affording me the other options available in ACR. Sadly that seems not to be the case.
False-color Infrared film and digital camera sensors don't have anything like the same characteristics. In fact, the deep yellow filter in the article is analogous to the IR-cutoff filter in visible light digital photography. All three emulsion layers in Ektachrome IR are sensitive to blue, so you use a deep yellow (or 'minus blue') filter to remove that light. Similarly, all 3 or 4 colors of the Bayer array on the digital camera sensor pass IR, and the sensor, so you use an IR-cutoff to remove that light.
Shooting digital IR through a yellow filter would give you red+IR, green+IR, and IR-only as your three channels. I suppose the blue channel would give a pure IR monochrome image, and there would be enough visible light admitted to allow this method on a DSLR where composition through a deep red or IR-pass filter on the lens would be difficult to impossible. An interesting suggestion, but not applicable to this case.
It seems like it would be a huge issue to photographers that ACR does not, indeed cannot, use the WB data in the RAW file without mangling it. I guess I'm wrong. As to complaining about this, is there an effective channel to Adobe for user feedback?