Before and after publication of Zelen's results astronomer and charter CSICOP member Dennis Rawlins, the CSICOP Council's only astronomer at the time, repeatedly objected to the procedure and to CSICOP's subsequent reportage of it. Rawlins privately urged that the Gauquelins' results were valid and the “Zelen test” could only uphold this and that Zelen had diverted from the original purpose of the control test, which was to check the base rate of births with Mars in the "key" sectors. It appeared to him that the test had minimised the significance of the Mars/key-sector correlations with athletes by splitting the sample of athletes and that the experimenters, who were supposed to be upholding scientific standards, were actually distorting and manipulating evidence to conceal the result of an ill-considered test.