  It is demonstrated that an understanding of the 5/2 fractional quantum Hall
effect can be achieved within the composite fermion theory without appealing to
the Pfaffian wave function. The residual interaction between composite fermions
plays a crucial role in establishing incompressibility at this filling factor.
This approach has the advantage of being amenable to systematic perturbative
improvements, and produces ground as well as excited states. It, however, does
not relate to non-Abelian statistics in any obvious manner.
